The Lollipop Moment

I went to see Lois Zachary at the mentoring conference last week. She opened with this video and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. So powerful.




If you don't have time to watch the video, here is the commentary written (of most of the video, missing some at the end):

I want to start just by asking everyone in the audience a question: How many of you are completely comfortable calling yourselves a leader?

See, I've asked that question all the way across the country, and everywhere I ask it, no matter where, there's always a huge portion of the audience that won't put up their hand. And I've come to realize that we have made leadership into something bigger than us. We've made it into something beyond us. And I worry sometimes that we spend so much time celebrating amazing things that hardly anybody can do that we've convinced ourselves that those are the only things worth celebrating, and we start to devalue the things that we can do every day.

I went to a little school called Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, and on my last day there a girl came up to me and she said, "I remember the first time that I met you." And then she told me a story that happened four years earlier.

She said, "On the day before I started University I was in the hotel room with my mom and my dad. And I was so scared and so convinced that I couldn't do this; that I wasn't ready for university that I just burst into tears. And my mom and my dad were amazing. They were like, 'Look, we know you're scared, but let's just go tomorrow, let's go to the first day and if at any point you feel as if you can't do this, that's fine, just tell us, we'll take you home. We love you no matter what.'"

She said, "And so I went the next day and was standing in line getting ready for registration and I looked around and I just knew I couldn't do it. I knew I wasn't ready, I knew I had to quit. And I turned to my mom and my dad to tell them that we needed to go home, and just at that moment you came out of the student union building wearing the stupidest hat I have ever seen in my life. It was awesome. And you had a bucket full of lollipops. And you were walking along and you were handing the lollipops out to people in line and talking about [a charity called] Shinerama. And all of a sudden you got to me, and you just stopped. And you stared. It was creepy. And then you looked at the guy next to me, and you smiled, and you reached in to your bucket and you pulled out a lollipop and you held it out to him. And you said to him, 'You need to give a lollipop to the beautiful woman standing next to you.' "

And she said, "I have never seen anyone get more embarrassed faster in my life. He turned beet-red and wouldn't even look at me and just kinda held the lollipop out like this." [shyly giving the lollipop] "And I felt so bad for this dude that I took the lollipop and as soon as I did you got this incredibly severe look on your face and you looked at my mom and my dad and you said, 'Look at that. Look at that. First day away from home and already she's taking candy from a stranger!'"

And she said, "Everybody lost it. Twenty feet in every direction, everyone started to howl. And I know this is cheesy, and I don't know why I'm telling you this, but in that moment when everyone was laughing, I knew that I shouldn't quit. And I haven't spoken to you once in the four years since that day, but I heard that you were leaving, and I had to come up and tell you that you've been an incredibly important person in my life, and I'm going to miss you."

And she walks away. And I'm flattened. And she gets about six feet away and she turns around and smiles and goes, "And you should probably know this too. I'm still dating that guy four years later." A year and half after I moved to Toronto, I got an invitation to their wedding.

Here's the kicker. I don't remember that.

How many of you guys have a lollipop moment? A moment where someone said something or did something that you feel fundamentally made your life better?

We need to redefine leadership as being about lollipop moments, how many of them we create, how many of them we acknowledge, how many of them we pay forward, and how many of them we say thank you for. Because we've made leadership about changing the world, and there is no world, there are only six billion understandings of it. And if you change one person's understanding of it, one person's understanding of what they're capable of, one person's understanding of how much people care about them, one person's understanding of how powerful an agent of change they can be in this world, you've changed the whole thing.

*************************

Remember to tell people who made your lollipop moment. Thank them. Chances are they do not know it. As teachers, we create lollipop moments each day and often never know it. Be the change. Be kind!

The Moment I Knew... Less Stress, More Living

This is an excellent article from a teacher about stress, her breaking point, how it happened, and how she handled it... very well written and easy to connect to as a teacher.

Worklife balance and stress management are such important parts of being a teacher and I think too often educators do not have the tools, time or ability to "de stress" in healthy ways to maintain that emotional health and balance that is key.

The Moment I knew.... By Heather Hollis

My student's father is listing my faults like he's ticking off a grocery list. 

"He knows you don't like him. You don't call him 'my angel' like his teacher did last year."
 
"You humiliate him in front of the class."
 
"You blame him for everything."
 
No mention is made of the fact that this child has been noted for anger and social issues since he started school.

No mention is made of the fact that if another child looks at him sideways, he hauls off and punches them. And then screams and cries that he has been wrongly accused.
 
No mention is made of the fact that this child has disrupted the entire class over and over again to the detriment of all the other children.
 
I try to explain that I am very concerned about this child's success and happiness but it falls on deaf ears. I'm sweating and my heart is beating a mile a minute. My fight or flight impulse is on full throttle and I start to wonder if I'm having a panic attack.
 
Dad is on a roll and I'm about to be flattened.
 
Finally, he concludes his list of my offenses by saying quite matter-of-factly, "I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself or worse and, I don't like to say it, but I think it would be because of you."
 
And that's when it happened.
 
I could feel the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. Except instead of the camel's back, it was a little something inside my head.
 
I was suddenly cold but calm.
 
I stood up and said, "I have to go now" and walked out of the room.
As I walked away, I started to cry.
 
I cried for 10 hours straight.
 
The next morning I got up and went back to work.

But it was different. I was different.
 
I took the next week off -- stress leave they called it. But it was more than that.
Something inside me died that day.
 
Logically, I knew I wasn't to blame, but emotionally? That was a different story.
My class that year was overloaded with children who had a wide variety of special needs. With resources stretched thin, it was impossible to give each one the attention they needed and deserved.
 
I dealt with unhappy, frustrated parents who (rightly) complained and demanded better services. Worse than that, I had students who often sat idle because they could not do the work without one-on-one support.
 
But it was like getting blood from stone. There was no money in the budget for extra help and the ratio of 29 students to one teacher was a recipe for disaster.
 
This is not to say it was a terrible year; quite the contrary. In fact, I loved my students and they, for the most part, loved me. We laughed and learned and had some wonderful times.
 
But there was a hole in my heart that just kept widening. I darkly joked to my fellow teachers that it didn't matter if anyone got upset with me anymore because I was "dead inside."
 
When I found myself sobbing in the bathtub the night before the last day of school, I realized it was time.
 
I had survived the battle but lost the war. My love for teaching was gone.

I spent the following year on an unpaid leave of absence. Luckily for me, I had a supportive spouse and a healthy line of credit. It was a year well spent regaining my mental and physical health.
 
Sleeping came first. I slept like the dead for months.
 
Then I started exercising -- long walks, yoga and fitness classes, jogging. Meditation and heart-felt chats with good friends and family. I focused on eating healthy. I eased up on the daily wine habit that had become a quick and easy way of blotting out the feelings of anger and frustration.
 
I read voraciously and watched television in the middle of the day.
 
Finally, I started writing again. Honestly and from the heart about issues related to teaching and women and mothering.

It didn't happen all at once but eventually I saw the changes. My heart began to open again and the bitterness started to seep away.

I stopped whispering horrible lies to myself, like, "You were a bad teacher. Those children shouldn't have had to endure a year like you gave them." And I started to listen to my true voice that said, "They knew you loved them. And look at how far they came!  

Insult yourself and you insult them."

I know now that I can't single-handedly change the education system. I can, however, change the way one teacher handles it.

Bring it on. I'm ready.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-hollis/the-moment-i-knew_27_b_3427778.html

Currently...

I recently started reading some teacher-blogs and participating in some linky parties they do... One I love is from here and every month there is a "Currently" posted and everyone participates and links up. I haven't quite had the time or patience to use the jpg and fill it in myself, so I just post it, link and type my answers.... So here goes....

Listening: American Idol. Reality TV is my guilty pleasure.

Loving: My puppy. She is sick right now so extra snuggles help.

Thinking: About my unit plan for a new novel study I haven't done before. Touching Spirit Bear.

Wanting: A vacation this Spring Break. Sadly, none planned, well, nothing major... nothing tropical!

Needing: More sleep, but isn't that always the case for teachers?

Like, Love, Hate -Acronyms, Adapting , Attitude

*These three words had to start with the same letter as your first name

-Acronyms are fun ways to learn and memorize things
-Adapting lessons, activities, ideas I pick up from my travels as a TTOC (sub) and online and through collaboration with colleagues.
-Attitude... I teach 8th grade... enough said right?


So if you want to participate go add your linky here and read the instructions ( rule of 3...you need to comment and share the love on the 2 in front of your link and then come back and share some love on the one behind your link)

Teacher's Hall Pass

Found this cool blog post on some teacher blogs I follow and decided to participate.... HALL PASS for teachers....

Product
I love my SMARTboard in my class. It allows me to experiment with so many interactive lessons.

Area
Right now it is the "nobility table" We are doing "The Feudal Games" and each student has a role in the system. The king and queen have a large table in the corner of class where they can oversee everyone and it is near the teachers desk so it is nice.

Signal
Right now it is just a simple "regardez moi" then "ecoutez" because I teach them FSL (French) I like to use those commands throughout the day.

Sanity
Is it a cop out to say my prep block? Last block of the day is prep and it is often when I eat my lunch (finally) and update our class website with homework and copy tomorrow (or next weeks) handouts and create SMARTboard lessons and get organized. Also, the SEA in my class is amazing and keeps me sane, it is great having another adult in the room some of the day to work with.


VIA http://tunstalltimes.blogspot.ca/2013/02/hall-pass-linky.html

Tell me something good...

I have started to be a more avid reader of edu-blogs from teachers all over North America. There is a great network of teachers that do link-up posts on various topics and I promised myself I would try to participate in some. So here is one from Rowdy in First Grade. Share "something good" from home and school....

HOME: We got a new puppy and it has really brought us together for more family time together.

SCHOOL: My teaching partner is doing a VERY cool activity for Socials Studies that I am enjoying learning. We also have finished our public speaking unit *phew* and are going to move onto some debating!

How B.C. tuition fees compare

Vancouver Sun
May 25, 2012

Students in Quebec have been striking for more than 100 days over increases to post-secondary tuition; this week in B.C. only several dozen students appeared at a rally in support.


Yet, as Sun reporter Janet Steffenhagen reported, B.C. students pay higher tuition than Quebecers attending post-secondary schools in their province, a yearly average of $4,852 compared with $2,519. Quebec's fees are the lowest in the country, where the national aver-age for tuition at public post-secondary institutions is $5,366.


Tuition for an under-graduate arts student at the University of B.C. has quintupled over the past 30 years, rising from about $900 a year to about $4,600. At the same time, the minimum wage has increased threefold over the same period, to $10.25 an hour this year from $3.65.


B.C. fees have been climbing steadily since 2002, when the newly elected Liberal government killed a six-year tuition freeze introduced by the previous NDP administration. Tuition soared as post-secondary schools tried to cover lost revenue: the University of B.C. boosted undergraduate fees by an average of 22 per cent, while the hike at Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria was about 30 per cent.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/tuition+fees+compare/6677126/story.html#ixzz1vtxHoNyz

 

 

I still can't believe how much tuition has gone up even in recent years and am not afraid to admit I still owe a lot in student loans. It is unfortunate that after going to post-secondary for so many years (I did two degrees before I became a teacher) that I am still in an unsecure, on-call, position with no steady income or pay. TTOCs with student loans, many who are on-call for more than a year or two as used to be the case, struggle to repay the money used for their education. It is frustrsting that one of my sisters, who didn't finish highschool until she went back in her 20's, makes more than I do and has no student loans to worry about. What kind of message are we sending out youth when post secondary education becomes so expensive?

High Five Reading Out Loud

I don't remember where I read or heard this idea recently, but last week I tried it out. I was at a Middle School covering various classes for the Grade 8 articulation (When Grade 7 classroom teachers meet with High School Counsellors to discuss students heading to Grade 8 next year)

Anyways, in one of the classes we were reading a Science text book out loud and since I did not know the students names, reading levels and no one was volunteering to read, I decided to try this trick.

I chose one student to read the first paragraph. When they were done they had to high five a classmate who would read the next paragraph and so on and so forth.

What I liked about this was that students were more likely to follow along because they didn't know if they would be chosen (or if it was their friend reading, they knew they might be chosen)

It was nice because I was only there for 30 minutes and didn't know the students well, so this was a fun and different way to choose readers. Most the class had a turn (no repeats allowed) and it got them out of their desk to go high five someone to read next.

Value Public Speaking - Find your Voice

As a child I was shy.

No really, there was a phase when I wasn't so... 'not shy.'

I was a bit of a 'tom-boy' until Grade 3, and then I was teased a lot because of my birthmark that covered most of the left side of my face. Add to that the fact that our family moved a lot and it isn't shocking that overall, I just didn't bother to not be shy, it was just easier.

By about grade 5 we finally stopped moving every year and I decided it appropriate to come out of my shell. My new school was half way through the 'Public Speaking' unit when I arrived, and though I had very little interest in speaking in front of these new classmates, I wrote a speech and was shocked to be chosen to represent our class at the school wide assembly.

From there, further shock came when I won for my grade level and was selected to move on and present at the district level. I placed second there, lost to a clever speech on toilet paper, but my confidence grew and looking back it was the kick-start to my continued habit of speaking to groups.

As a teenager, I became an advocate of for youth chairing the local Teen Committee and hosting the first ever 'Youth Week' in the lower mainland. I was chosen to speak with, then Premier, Glen Clark, at the Provincial opening ceremonies for the event.

Friends were never shocked to hear me speaking in front of groups, though I never thought of myself as a 'public speaker' I still get nervous, I still wonder if anyone even wants to listen and if what I have to say is important to anyone but me, but nevertheless, I speak up.

Last year as I taught grade 6/7s public speaking, I saw mixed reactions and abilities as they prepared and presented. I shared with them my experiences starting from grade 5 and outlined why I felt public speaking was important.

As a teacher we speak to a group of students every day. I think those skills developed years ago are still used daily in our classes. But we have a voice and we need to feel empowered to use it.

Next week I am presenting with a colleague to the local board as I have in the past at the budget meeting.

Earlier this year I presented at the Provincial Bargaining table.

At the AGM I have braved the mic

I have put on workshops and spoken to colleagues numerous times and still use (or try to use) those skills I learned in grade 5... stand tall, speak slowly, don't fidget, articulate, breathe, make eye contact....

I have a voice, and I have learned its power.

Public Speaking IS an important skill and I am so glad it continues to be practiced and celebrated in schools. I only hope more teachers recognize their voice and use it during this important time.