values

by

Actions Speak

This is Kevin. Kevin is our Groundsman. Kevin arrives at school very early each morning and works through until the afternoon. He is multi skilled. He is an artist. You can see his creativity around the school in rock sculptures, garden designs and plantings. He is a problem solver, constantly working out strategies to fix or make things for our school. He is a mathematician measuring, calculating, weighing, budgeting, working to time limits and meeting deadlines. He is a tradesman involved in plumbing, painting, building and constructing.

 

The school looks so good and is so well maintained because of his work and creativity. Kevin takes pride in all that he does. And it shows. Kevin is a vital member of our school community.

Our school, our students, our school community. We are all vital members of our school community. Our school exists for our students. Our teachers and SSOs do not talk about “My Class” or “My Students” but rather “Our School” and “Our Students”. We are all responsible for the success of our students and our school, and this includes “Our Parents and Caregivers”.

Like teachers and SSOs, parents and caregivers are essential members of our school community and like staff, your words, actions and behaviours model expectations to our students. When parents and caregivers solve problems calmly through dialogue and conversation with each other or with staff they show that they too follow our School Values of Good Manners and Friendliness. Conversely, if they swear at each other from their cars outside the school, it undermines our values.

When parents and caregivers allow children to learn by their mistakes and the consequences of their actions they show that they too follow our School Values of Resilience and Persistence. Conversely, if they rescue their children they undermine and stop their learning.

When parents and caregivers get their children to school on time they demonstrate that they value learning and also model organization and time management skills. What does constantly being late teach children?

Kevin works so hard to have our school look the best it can be. Hopefully we are all proud of our school. I am not proud of the litter around the yard and I always try to model picking up litter despite never dropping it. How powerful it would be for all members of our school community to pick up papers as they walk through the school? It would show their pride in our school. It would model to the students that they should keep the yard clean and show care for our school by keeping it clean. It would encourage students to do the same. It would show that we all appreciate the great work being done by Kevin and it would show that we all have pride in Our School.

Our actions speak louder than words. Kevin doesn’t talk about painting a wall. He just gets about doing it and doing it well. Thanks Kevin for being such a good role model for Our School, Our Students and Our School Community.

by

Cocooning Children

Once a boy  found a caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it. The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

 One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy’s mother explained that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon and was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The boy watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!

The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He got a pair of scissors, and snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He thought that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.

But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings.

It never was able to fly…

The boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong and learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.

Struggling is an important part of any growth experience. Muscles don’t grow without be stretched. Our school values include resilience and persistence. TfEL (Teaching for Effective Learning) 2.4 is about Challenge and (appropriate) support. How difficult this becomes when (some/many) parents continually “rescue” their children. As the boy in the story, the parents might be well meaning but the result is children who cannot “fly”.

As part of the school’s Virtues program, we work with parents to enable children to develop resilience and persistence through struggling and embracing challenge. The following message to parents that I observed at Tapping Primary School WA (A Play Is The Way Lighthouse School) will soon be on posters around our school:

No False Rescues

Falsely rescuing children from emotional discomfort and difficulty weakens their resiliency and lessens their ability to persevere.

 We rescue when a someone is struggling to breathe, not when one is struggling to swim in a swimming lesson.Cocooning children will never allow them to fly.

by

The Mouldy Mug

I am not writing this post to take the opportunity of having a cheap shot at Port Adelaide Football Club supports despite the caption on the mug clearly showing Port Adelaide Football Club which strongly implies that the mug was owned by Magpies or Power supporter. I say “owned” because after taking the photo I disposed the mug in the bin. What is not as obvious is that the coffee residue in this mug had dried thickly and a caffeine addicted spider had created a web above the foul, pungent stain. This mug had been sitting on a bench for months partly hidden from view by other jetsam which someone had discarded.

This mouldy mug illustrates a deeper issue that is the elephant in this case, our staffroom. What does it say when a mug is left for months in a public place and no-one deals with it? What does it say when after any break there are teaspoons or mugs left in the sink? What does it say when coffee rings are left on a table or bench, burnt cheese on the sandwich toaster or food and crumbs left on the staffroom table on a Friday evening? I could go on about papers left on staffroom tables, benches and floors, dirty trays in the oven and the stove top filthy… but I won’t.

In an institution which has a role in teaching values to children, why do we have such difficulty in modelling basic values such as respect and care to our colleagues? Dropping a spoon into the sink is actually saying that I expect someone else to do this for me. I do not respect my colleagues enough to wash, dry and put away a spoon. I am happy for you to clean up my mess left in the sandwich maker because my time is more important than yours. I will ignore the mess on the staffroom table and bench because I know that someone else will do it. Those wonderful staffroom fairies will magically make everything right.

My dear mum would always say to me, “Honest in a little, Honest in a lot.” Any value here can be substituted here.

I did not set out to Crow about the since departed Port Adelaide Mug. I simply want to state that for a school culture to be truly values driven, collaborative and supportive we need to get the little things right to enable the big things to happen.