I read this book Delivering Happiness a few years ago. This is all about Zappos insane devotion to customer service. As I read it, I was reminded that so much of teaching is just that - relating to and serving our students. Why was Hsieh able to pull off the impossible? I mean selling shows online to mostly women is an incredible feat. Not because they are picky or difficult, but it's the fact that no one can try shoes on on line. But Hsieh solved this problem in legendary fashion: he allowed customers to buy their shoes and, if they didn't fit, Zappos would pay for the return and then ship them another size!

Talk about winning over a customer base. The biggest take away from this book was that Hsieh made customer service the priority for everyone at Zappos, not just a team or department.

How can we do that in schools?

Week #13 – Nov. 30 - Dec 4

Teaching Thought #53 - Embrace the Near Win

This is an amazing TED Talk by Sarah Lewis. Watching this makes me rethink how I define success for not just me but my students too. Success is a moment, Lewis says, and then asks, how do we convert success to mastery? Well, that’s something I’m still working on.

My favorite line, though, comes when Lewis spends several hours watching the archery team at Columbia. After watching the archers exhaust themselves, facing success and defeat again and again as they hold 50 pounds of draw weight on every single shot as they try to hit the ten ring on the target, which to Lewis anyway, seems impossible.

What Lewis says connects to teaching in so many ways: “Success is hitting that ten rign, but mastery is knowing that it means nothing if you can’t do it again and again.”

Teaching Thought #54 - Just in Case vs. Just in Time

The longer I teach, the more I realize that the students I teach don’t learn like I do or did. My generation (Gen X and every generation before) tended to learn in the “Just in Case” school of education. This meant that we had to learn stuff “just in case” we would need it some day.

I recall sitting in Mr. Thompson’s typing class (yes, there used to be a typing class). I struggled to learn how to have my fingers follow the patterns and figure out where the keys were. But the message was clear: you need to know this just in case you have an office job one day or just in case you go to college. That was it. If you were going to work on an assembly line, farm, or work on cars, there was little need to take typing.

Now, I won’t say that there aren’t things we don’t need to learn that just in case one day we will need them. I believe this to be true.

However, that isn’t the world of knowledge or school the majority of millennials, Gen Z, and now Gen Y live in. Think about it, if my son wants to learn something, the number one place he goes is Google. Google tends to send him to the number one place for learning things today: youtube. He can learn many things not ‘just in case’ he needs to learn it to use it one day in the distant future; he can learn it within minutes or “just in time’ so that he can use it immediately.

When was the last time you had to learn something new (repairing your dishwasher? Putting in a new headlight? Wiring a lamp? or changing the spark plug in your lawn mower?)? I bet you went to youtube?

So, how can we use this as educators? For me, I begin every lesson or assignment with the answer to this question at the forefront: “When will my students ever use this?” If I can’t answer that, I don’t teach it. And if I can answer it, then I move on to answering this question: “How will my students be able to use or apply this skill or knowledge right now in their lives?”

If you can answer those two questions, you’ll do well teaching the ‘just in time’ generation of learners.

Teaching Thought #55 - Vikings or Victims

I stole these terms from Tim Elmore. In his article “How to Help Gen Z Break Away from All-or-Nothing Mindet” Elmore uses the terms to illustrate how truly divided their world is. Worse yet, this division often seeps into their own lives and how they see themselves. Just look at social media for a second to see this. Either someone’s life is awesome or it’s a disaster. Either they are living their best lives or the world is crushing them.

Elmore offers us a few ways to overcome this with our students and our own kids

1. Discuss the good elements in every situation. This one is playing out right now (mostly by adults by the way) as I’m writing this - the MSHL has just ruled to move volleyball and football to the spring. This is difficult for kids (and really difficult for parents). But there is some good to come of this. As one parent told me, “When I told my son that there wasn’t going to be football in the fall, he said, ‘Okay. That means more time to lift weights.’” That’s the kind of attitude and perspective we need.

2. Enable them to see flaws in all-or-nothing thinking. This is also evident in the MSHL fallout. One parent wrote that for a lot of kids “sports = school.” Now that is all-or-nothing thinking if I’ve ever seen it. No it isn’t. Are sports an important part of high school? Yes. Are they the most important thing, not at all! If the only reason kids get through high school is from playing sports, what does that say about the prospects for the rest of their lives? If kids have to play sports to do well in school, how can so many of our graduates move on to college and thrive, yet a tiny fraction of them go on to play sports? This is true for someone too who thinks sports have no place in school. Sports allow students to develop what I call ‘bridging’ talents. One such talent that I learned from high school sports was the importance of practice and getting better. I use that every day in my writing and lesson planning. And if it weren’t for sports in high school, I would not have cared as much about my grades as I did, for my mother always was on me about being on the B honor roll at least to be eligible for sports and for a discount on car insurance.

3. Learn to use the words “and” and “yet.” I saw a Facebook post the other day along the lines of “When will life stop crushing me? I could use a break.” This is all-or-nothing thinking at its best. Why not apply “and” or “yet” to that phrase: “Right now I’m struggling, yet I’m going to find a way to work out of this” or “Right now I’m struggling, and I need help.” So often people just want to whine. That’s not the example our students need to see or hear.

4. Focus on what can be learned from everyone and everything. This perhaps is the hardest thing right now. I just saw a post on FB about how Democrats are the only part that believe in police accountability and equal opportunities for minorities. Yet, I know that’s not true from talking with my conservative friends. Likewise there are posts that state only Republicans believe in keeping our country safe and in supporting law enforcement. Yet, I know that, as a liberal, I believe in keeping America safe and in supporting law enforcement too. I always learn from my discussions with people who believe things differently than me. If the discussions can be rationale. But because too many of my peers don’t follow 1-3 on this list, rationale discussions don’t happen as often as they should, and they never happen on Facebook.

What are some ways you try to help our young people avoid all-or-nothing thinking?

Teaching Thought #56 - Step number one to a happier life

I heard this on a podcast the other day, and it stopped me in my tracks: “Step number one to a happier life is to give up your hope for a happier past.”

So many people think - especially in education - that there was this mythical time in public education where it actually worked really well. But that’s the myth of nostalgia at work. Probably after the Russian’s launched Sputnik - and our government made a serious effort to boost our science and math curriculum in schools - was the closest to a mythical “golden days” of education. But even then, only a fraction of students graduated high school. If fewer than half graduated, what must our reading levels have been like? If you were a student of color, good luck having a chance at an equal education. If you were female, good luck playing sports and being encouraged to go to college.

The danger in this type of thinking is that it casts our modern education system in an unfair, negative light. Worse yet, it paints the late 1950s and early 1960s in a more positive light than that time period deserves.

So many of us spend too much time looking back at our past and wanting it to be better than it actually was. And we miss the most important thing: the hard times (the times when Mommy and Daddy don’t bail you out and actually let you struggle and develop grit and determination) are what make us who we are.

Think about that the next time you want to give a student an easy way out or when you want to rush in to help your son or daughter when they could struggle through it or learn from the failure.

Teaching Thought #57 - The Kindness of Clarity

Many of the leaders I respect most have this mantra, “To be clear is to be kind; to be unclear is to be unkind.” And it’s true.

To be clear, though, often means having the dreaded difficult conversation - and if you’re like me - you hate those. It might help some to go into the meeting where the difficult conversation is going to have to happen with the mindset that the nicest thing you can do for the student or employee is to be clear with them how they need to improve or how what they did was wrong. But that doesn’t make it easy. What makes it easy is to not have the conversation at all. But that isn’t being clear.

One way to handle this is to be honest with the person. Literally tell them, “We need to have a difficult conversation. I am not good at this. I don’t like difficult conversations. You probably don’t like them either, but to not address this isn’t fair to you. I am going to try and be clear so I can be kind in letting you know how to improve so that we don’t have to have another difficult conversation again.”

How do you find ways to handle difficult conversations? How do you communicate clearly to your employees or students in order to be kind?

Then when I was reading another teacher's blog, a new idea popped into my mind on how to tweak and improve how I teach the multi-genre research paper.

It never gets old, learning and relearning and changing my mind. It never gets old when I stumble across a video, book, or article that makes me wonder how I could possibly have been teaching all these years without knowing what I just learned in that video, brook, or article.

Here is a great example -

Now if that doesn't get you interested, I don't know what will!

In this episode, Elmore traces the history of American education, from the old one-room-school house to Horace Mann's implementation of the 'normal school' up through modern education.

Unfortunately, nothing resists change like public schools. I mean if you spend one day at LHS, you will hear the bells go off, even though there are a tiny handful of students and teachers in there. Why? Because it's what we've always done.

And nothing does "That's how we've always done it, so why change?" better than public education.

If you listen to this, you will see how education hasn't changed nearly enough while the needs of our students have changed entirely.

Elmore talks about a group of seniors he was working with. They all revealed that they needed more teaching in the area of adulting - money management, how to register for college, how to take out loans, even how to do laundry.

These, of course, were skills taught for the most part by parents. But that's not happening anymore. Parents are busy - often working several jobs - and the large extended family isn't what it used to be. And kids have more on their plates than ever before.

So a lot of key skills are falling through the cracks. But they don't have to.

What would people say about the culture in your room? In your school? In your district?

Are you intentional with your culture? As in, do you work hard on it every day (to tie this in to our last PD Zoom meeting, these are where MGC's (moments of genuine connection) come in? Or do you just hope for the best? As in, do you have core values that you post around but never ever talk about?

Culture doesn't just happen. Well, I guess it does. But if you aren't intentional about it, the culture that is allowed to grow on its own is not the kind of culture you want.

In fact, one raeson Hsieh started Zappos was - in his former company - he started to hate getting out of bed and coming to work every day. At his own company!

How many of us would just shrug and say, "Well, what can you do about it?" and get on with having a J-O-B?

All Hsieh did was sell that company and start Zappos. You always have a choice. It your district or school culture isn't what you like it to be, close that door to your classroom and create the kind of culture your kids deserve.

Trust me. We can all learn from Zappos.

How cool is that?

Here is the list Zappos wants their employees to read. What would your list be for books every student had to read before coming into your class? OR, better yet, what would your list be for books every teacher in your department or grade level should read? Or, best of all, what would your list be for books every teacher/administrator/school board/staff member should read before they start working in your district?

How incredible is that? Would you in your classroom or school, have the guts to do that? What would your employees or students say? What would that reveal about you and your culture.

Make no mistake. The culture of your school/classroom starts with you.

I am married to the most amazing person in the world, Kristie. It was love at first sight. At least for me. And it still is.

We have four wonderful children, Casey, Koko, Kenzie, and Cash. And now we have been blessed with five grandchildren!

I also happen to have the greatest job in the world: teaching English to high school students.

I am in my 23rd year of teaching at Lincoln High School. I graduated from Lafayette High School in Red Lake Falls in 1992. I decided to enter the field of education because of two amazing teachers, Mr. Mueller, my fourth and sixth grade elementary school teacher and assistant baseball coach, and Mrs. Christianson, my 9th grade English teacher.

I attended Northland Community College, and had my life changed by the amazing Dr. Diane Drake. Then I transferred to Bemidji State University in 1995. There I had amazing professors who further inspired me to teach English (Dr. Helen Bonner, Dr. Mark Christensen, Susan Hauser, and Gerry Schnabel). I graduated with my BS in English Education in 1997.

I student taught with the wonderful Lisa Semanko and then began teaching full-time at LHS in 1998.

I took a year's leave of absence in 2001-02 to return to BSU for my MA in English. There I had the privilege to teach and work closely with my greatest mentor, Dr. Mark Christensen. I earned my MA in English in 2006 and was honored with "Thesis of the Year" for my creative non-fiction, braided, multi-genre memoir, "Meeting Myrtle: A Biography."

In 2013, thanks to my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Jodi Holen, I was offered an adjunct teaching position fall semester at the University of North Dakota. Tuesday nights I teach Intro to Education: Teaching and Learning 250 from 5-8. Those three hours fly by in about ten minutes.

Then in 2016 I was blessed to win a WEM award (thanks to a nomination from a former student (and now an elementary school teacher), Ciera Mooney).

In 2017 I became part of the #pineconepd podcast club along with Brian Loe, Jeff Mumm, Kelsey Johnson, Kelly Weets, Josh Watne, Tevia Strand, Megan Vigen, Mariah Hruby, Laura Brickson, Loren Leake, Katie Hahn, Melora Burgee, and new members all the time. This has been one of the best forms of PD I've ever been a part of. They make me a better teacher every time we meet. Please think about joining us in the summer at the Pine Cone Pub from 6:30 - until we've solved all the world's problems. For that evening anyway.

Thanks to the inspiration of Shane Zutz (our former principal) I devised this as a way to distribute my Teaching Thoughts and add more content to, hopefully, help out and inspire others.

Email: kurt.reynolds@myprowler.org
Website: http://teacherscribe.blogspot.com
Location: 101 South Knight Aver Thief River Falls MN 56701
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