ELLEN
BERG
Diary #11
Putting Some Spirit in Our Team!
Imagine a Friday afternoon where you left with a smile on your face. Comments like, "This was a good week," and "I'm going to miss them," are made throughout your team. You linger for a few minutes after the buses leave rather than making a beeline to your car. Sound unbelievable? It is not. It happened this week with the sixth grade team at Turner Middle. Two Mondays ago we sat down to a team meeting, preparing to go over the usual team business. "I have something really unorthodox to propose," I said hesitantly. "You might think I am crazy. What if, instead of focusing on all the negatives and disciplinary issues of our kids during these meetings, we focus instead on improving our instruction?" The team looked at me, then our team leader said, "Ellen and I must be reincarnated out of the same soul, because I was thinking the very same thing this weekend. I have been looking at changing what I am doing in class, because what I am doing now isn't working.""Our premise is that many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come into view. Find the right framework and extraordinary accomplishment becomes an everyday experience."
– The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander
We needed some spirit
I was relieved. I shared how while I thought we did a pretty good job of teaching, there was nothing special for the kids to look forward to. No team spirit, traditions, or other benchmarks of a really effective team. So we set the discipline folders aside, and we began to list some small, manageable changes we could make to develop a spirit of community and learning.
We came up with this list:
1. Daily trivia question: Homeroom teachers will announce a team wide trivia question during academic lab each day. Students have 24-hours to research and submit their answers. Correct answers are put into the team box for a drawing at the end of the week. 2. Monthly birthday celebration: Once a month during academic lab, we will hold a birthday celebration for that month's (and a corresponding summer month's) birthdays. Food, educational games and socializing will be offered during that time. 3. Committees: Interested groups of students will serve on committees during academic lab. A friendship committee, student council advisory panel, and newspaper committee will be formed. 4. Design your own T-shirt day: Students will bring in T-shirts to design to show their team spirit. 5. Math bowl: This is a structure our math teacher has had in place for a while. Essentially, students are selected to represent their homerooms based on that week's test scores. Homerooms compete against one another for the honor of being math champions for the week. We were tempted to list more, but our major problem as a team is being overambitious, and as a result, overwhelmed. We do nothing we set out to do. We committed ourselves to these five things, looking to see if they would make an impact.Here's what happened
We introduced the trivia question on Tuesday: "Who is the only three-time MVP for the NFL?" Kids excitedly wrote down the question, whispering among themselves. During lunch the next day, several students went to the library to research the answer to the question. When I finally collected the answers, there were only two questions from our students: "What was the answer?" and, "What is the next question?"
Although three students' names will be drawn for a prize each week, students have yet to ask me what the prize is. They seem to be more focused on finding the right answers out of self-pride. Talk of the trivia question can be heard throughout the building. It is working. On Friday we held our first birthday celebration. Because we had missed the first two months of school, we celebrated the September, October and November birthdays. All the teachers purchased cakes, snacks and drinks. We sang Happy Birthday to the honored students, and the eighth graders who are creating a memory book took our birthday students' pictures.At no time was there any of the chaos I have usually experienced during school parties. I gave the kids a list of acceptable activities, explained how cake and drinks would be passed out, and enlisted the assistance of several students. No drinks were spilled, and no fights erupted.
The kids decided the birthday students should get their cake first. My two most difficult girls orchestrated most of the cake passing, and even suggested the last piece of cake should be given to our principal. As the end of school neared, several students initiated the clean up. I am happy to say there were no crumbs or spills anywhere in my room, and I didn't have to say a word.
Teaching the whole child
Other teachers reported similar behavior. In one class, one of our most challenging students initiated and gave a toast to the birthday students. Many of our kids have volunteered to bring the supplies for next months celebration. Kids thanked and hugged us, leaving with smiles rather than the rolling of eyes and comments of, "Thank God it's Friday!" The final item that has been implemented is the friendship committee. Our social studies teacher has used a short amount of time from her class to have kids create signs to put on their lockers, listing their friends. Rather than being used to exclude others, students seem to be writing a broad sample of students on their own signs, and no one has felt left out or humiliated. The plan is to have one activity a week celebrating friendship. Although we are still in the initial stages of this process, I have to say that these few, simple strategies have improved our classroom (and team) climate tremendously. Along with my own strategy changes (see last diary), classroom discipline issues have improved dramatically. We want to create an environment where kids want to and do belong. We want to be more than just a center of academic learning; we want to reach and teach the whole child and build their social and emotional areas as well. I think we are on the right track.
