Tinkerings

Sitting in Scott Holcomb’s FETC session on using video tutorials for professional development for teachers (great session by the way!), the inevitable question was asked.  I was holding my breath hoping it wouldn’t happen, but Scott handled it with grace.

The session was about the efficacy of using video as a means for professional development with staff, especially in a system as large as Memphis City Schools.  Face-to-face training is great, but it is hugely limiting when you can only reach 5, 10, or even 50 people at one sitting.  By creating video tutorials (flipping professional development), teachers can log in at their convenience from any Internet-connected device and receive the information as many times as they need.

And so, the question…

When we do in-house training, we know the teachers are there.  We have them sign-in (and sometimes sign-out) as a way to verify their attendance.  But, online, they could start the video in the living room and then go to the kitchen to fix dinner.  (You know the question, don’t you….)  How do we really know they watched the video?

Now, I have to admit, I had a totally different answer in mind than Scott’s brilliance.  I would have answered with another question.  OK, so you know they were in attendance at the face-to-face training, but how do you know they were really, truly present?

Scott went an entirely different direction.  He talked about a paradigm shift in the way we view these things.  It is a paradigm shift from “training” to true “professional development.”

We offer training on a variety of subjects at our schools, and we require attendance in order to demonstrate both accountability and in order to only have to do the training once.  It is a fairly good model for principals and district administrators.  We can have a county-wide training and cover all 800 or so teachers in one, well-planned, thought-provoking hour, or half-day.  We have a box we can check off that says, “Been there.  Done that.”

But Scott wasn’t talking about video tutorials online for training.  He was talking about using them for professional development.  Professional development doesn’t come from the top down.  It comes from within.

Did you catch that?  It comes from within.

As a teacher, I am supposed to know what I don’t know.  Teaching is a never-ending quest of learning.  We use professional development for ourselves to make us better teachers.  Better learners.  Better team-mates.  Better advocates.  And, in general, just… better.

There is a place for training.  Hey! Its my job!  I provide “training” for teachers on how to use Web 2.0 tools, district-purchased software, and, of course, iPads.

But, it seems to me, there is a much larger arena for professional development.

Thank you, Scott, for helping me draw a line between the two on my to-do list.

When I made the decision to come to Orlando for Edmodocon and FETC, I knew I would be traveling to the west coast to try to get some pictures of an ocean sunset.  I had tried a few times before, but I had the wrong camera equipment.  Or the clouds were bad.  Or maybe I just didn’t know what I was doing.

Regardless, I was committed to going.  I knew what time I needed to leave the hotel in Orlando to get there with plenty of time to get my camera set up where I wanted it.  I knew where I wanted to be.  I even knew something about the angle from which I wanted to take these pictures.

And so I did.  I left on time.  Early even.  I had time to snap a few other pictures (none of which I liked, all of which went into my Trash file).  I got to where I wanted to go, walked down the beach, found the jetty I wanted in my shot, scouted around to find the angle I wanted, and then set up to wait.  I was committed to the shot.

As the sun started to get into range, I knew I had the right equipment.  The cloud cover was cooperating.   Even the people standing out on the jetty fishing seemed to stand still for my camera.  I knew I had it.

And then it happened.

A bird off to the right of me dive bombed the water for fish.  I wanted that shot.  Then dolphins started rolling just out of camera range.  And I wanted that shot.  And then a sailboat….

You get the idea.

A friend of mine is fond of saying to me (repeatedly I might add), that life is all about choices.  And I had to quickly make some.  Taking these really cool pictures would have required changing lenses.  Changing ISO speeds.  Changing aperture settings.  Getting rid of the tripod.  And doing it all uber fast.

I might get the shots.  I might not.  One thing was certain: I would not be getting a sunset shot.  It was a painful ordeal.  For about 1/2 a second I struggled.  Then I saw this blog post forming in my head.  I had committed to a sunset shot.  I stayed the course and got what I came to get.  (You can see my photos here)

Life for me is a series of these choices on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis.  It is my nature to try to help people.  To try to help everyone.  Even at the expense of my own priorities.  I rationalize I can always do my work later, but this needs to be done right now.  As a result, it seems to friends that I am always working.  Always online.  And I guess I am.

I am constantly trying to catch up.

In life, like in photography, I really need to learn to commit.  Stop chasing shiny objects.  Stop putting my priorities on a shelf for another day.  Learn to say a simple “no” from time to time.  As Yoda says, “There is no try.  There is only do or do not.”

And once you’ve made the choice to commit…commit.

Most of the jokes I remember most are those I learned before I was 15.  Like this one:

A boy is having his arm set in a cast and asks the doctor if he will be able to play the violin when his arm is healed.  “Why sure!” answered the doctor.  “You should be able to play the violin just fine.”

“That’s good,” said the boy.  “I’ve always wanted to play the violin, but I never could before.”

Yeah, its lame I know.  But at 6:00 this morning when I was halfway through my 4 mile jog on our town’s Greenway, it was one of the things that came to mind between songs on Beatles-A-Rama.

I’ve never thought of myself as a runner.  There was always an excuse.  I’m too fat. I want to protect my knees. I get bored.  The list is long.  And it started early.

When I was attending Charles Elementary in Richmond, IN, we had to run in PE class.  I hated it.  Not because I couldn’t do it.  I could.  I was an outdoorsy, skinny, always running around the neighborhood kind of kid.  But I was bored with it.  And I didn’t do it well.  It wasn’t a natural gift for me.  If you had to graph out the results of all the kids in our grade level who ran the mile in PE, it might look like this:

Students are divided into quintiles.  The red line represents the accepted state standard pace which all students are supposed to achieve.  As you can see, there are some kids who just naturally thrive above the line.  There are some kids who are just below the line.  They could easily meet the standard with just a little help from their teacher.  And then there’s me.  That last group on the left. Way below the standard.  Way.

Now, the PE teacher could have helped me with my stride.  He could have helped with my breathing.  He could have had me run more in order to run faster.  I could have been placed in a remedial running group with all the other low runners.

And none of it would have helped.

Why?  Because I quit inside my head.  My body could do it easily.  But my head put the brakes on in a big way.

And it still does.  As I go out to the Greenway to run (or jog or walk really fast, whichever you would like to call it), I can sense my head telling me it is time to stop and walk.  My breathing is fine.  My legs are warmed up.  The Beatles are playing.  Everything is fine.

So I tell myself I will run as far as that next park bench down the trail.  I’ll go at least that far before I walk for a bit.  And then, about 50 yards before I get there I find myself walking.  It is my biggest frustration with running.  It isn’t the running.  It isn’t even the boredom.  My biggest frustration is my brain telling me to quit when I know I can still go farther.

Let’s flip those scores for a moment.  Instead of elementary PE class running times, let’s label them TCAP Proficiency.  With what group of students does a teacher naturally spend most of his or her time?

• Some teachers thrive on teaching those upper level kids because it is so easy and fun.
• Some will focus on those kids just below the line.  With a little push, a little encouragement, those kids might actually make it up into the proficient category.
• A few will focus on those kids at the bottom. They will see glimmers of hope, but experience a lot of frustration.

Those kids at the bottom often get extra help.  They are assigned after school tutoring.  They are put into an intervention class.  There are numerous parent-teacher conferences.  Extra work is assigned.  Easier work is assigned.  Less work is assigned.  Kids are allowed to draw the answer rather than write it.  Some can make videos.  We put them in Glogster, Blabberize, Prezi, and anything else that looks exciting.

And often we see very little improvement.  Why is that?

Because the kid has already quit in his brain.  His mind has convinced him that he can’t do it.  Her brain tells her to answer 6 questions, but quit before she answers the last 4.

Teachers can’t fix this.  Parents can’t fix this.  Friends can’t fix this.  Only the child can fix it.

People tell me all the time, “Once you start running you will love it.  You just need to get out there.”  OK.  I’m out there.  I’m liking it a little better.  I can even imagine myself loving it at some point.  Thriving on it even.  I get images of me in a 5K run. A half-marathon.  A marathon!

And then my brain makes me walk 50 yards before I need to.  And the reality of my frustration floods back through me again.

At 52, I can handle this kind of thing.  I can push myself a little farther next time.  I can push beyond my brain and let my running be guided by my heart.  Its not easy.  But I can do it.

But I couldn’t do that at 8.  Or 12.  Or 17.  Or even 32.  A lot of people can.  Some of us can’t.

NOTE: This is not necessarily an “opinion piece” on students or learning. Rather, I wrote this blog as a way to start a conversation about how to help kids who have already checked out of school.  What are you doing?  What are those around you doing?  We talk all the time about how a teacher has to motivate her kids.  What does that look like?  Is it working?  I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments section below (or on FB if you read this there).

I’ve now finished six weeks on the HCG Hormone Therapy Diet.  Yesterday I moved from 500 calories a day to 1,000 calories a day for the next three weeks as I get my body used to handling more calories again.  So the journey continues for a bit.

I lost 30 pounds in five weeks.  That sounds wonderful, but I lost 28 pounds in four weeks.  And that sounds better!  The downside is that the fifth week I stayed at 500 calories a day, torturing myself at times while watching others eat, only to find I had barely moved the scale with a two pound loss.

You can imagine the frustration of spending the last week losing absolutely nothing.  That’s right.  I ate 500 calories a day, took my HCG injections, and even started jogging (burning anywhere from 300 to 500 calories depending on the time on the road), and at the end of the week my weight on the scale looked like this:  212, 211, 213, 212, 211, 210, 212.  Frustrating.

Yesterday, as I said, I increased my calories to 1,000.  It was actually difficult to eat that many calories!  I was still careful to eat things that were “good” for me.  I treated myself to a Breakfast Power Sandwich at Panera.  It was the first bread I have had in 6 weeks.  The rest of the day was chicken, vegetables, and fruit.  All fresh.

I woke up this morning and weighed in at 209.  Yep.  I ate twice as much and lost 3 pounds overnight.

I have spent so much time concentrating on my weight, that I lost site of my waist size.  I used to have 3 basic sizes of clothes in my closet: Optimal, Fat, and Way Too Fat.  I got rid of the Way Too Fat clothes a week ago.  I’m wearing my Fat clothes now (yes 210 pounds used to be heavy for me!).

So to celebrate, I got out a pair of pants I hadn’t been able to wear in a long time.  I tried them on a couple of weeks ago and they were still too snug to wear.  Today they were too big! I was in shock!  This perfectly good pair of dress slacks are now a give-away item because I wasn’t paying attention to everything.

We get like this in education these days.  We look at the end-of-year test results and see that math is a low point in our class, or our school, or our district.  And so we throw everything we can at math.  But at the end of the year we find our language arts scores have dipped.

In school, like weight loss, we simply cannot afford to concentrate just on one thing.  We have multiple data points for a reason.

If we fail to learn this lesson, even the best laid plans of getting into our favorite clothing will wind up being a missed opportunity.  In weight loss, its just a pair of pants.

In education, its a child’s future.

Today is the last day of ISTE 2011 in Philadelphia.  It has been a great week.  It is well worth coming to ISTE even if you never go to a session.  Just spending time with people who love what you love (and are much better at it), wandering the ever expanding exhibit hall, and meeting up with friends you normally only see in a thumbnail picture on Facebook or Twitter is well worth the time and effort.  Oh, and there’s some technology stuff here, too.

I did have a couple of major hurdles to jump this week with respect to my diet routine.  Although there is a small fitness center in my hotel, there are no scales, so I have no idea if I have gained weight, lost weight, or just maintained.  Everywhere you go, somebody is offering you food.  And lots of it.  I’ve had dinner with the great folks from TechSmith, Discovery, Edmodo, and more.  The restaurants they choose are fabulous.  The menus mouthwatering to read.  But, I have tried to stick as close to my 500 calories as possible, although I know I’ve done more like 600 a couple of days.  But I’ve walked miles every day.  Sweated in the Philadelphia heat.  So maybe….

So, I’ve had to do other things to try to get a handle on how things are going with the weight loss.  Obviously, the way my pants and shirts fit are a big indicator.  The hole I am using on my belt is a big one as well.

But there are two that seem to be at odds with one another.  When I stand in front of the mirror, I look thinner than I have in a long, long time.  I can see it in my face and neck.  I can even see it around my waist when I turn sideways.  And yet, when I look straight down, my gut still seems to jut out in front of me way too far.  These two perspectives seem to be at odds with each other.  But I think I need them both to make me realize more closely where I truly am.  Yes, I’m losing weight.  No, I’m not there yet.

Assessment is the same.  Let’s leave behind the problem of in-class grades not matching student performance on TCAP.  That’s two totally different ways of looking at two very different sets of data.  What we need is to look at the same data from different perspectives.

Let’s say, for instance, we give a quiz or a test in our classroom, and the entire grade distribution (across 25 kids in elementary or 135 in secondary) runs as As and Bs.  We can feel pretty good about that (if we are convinced the test wasn’t too easy).  But let’s look closer.  Nearly every student in the class missed the same two questions. Suddenly, I have a different result.  Yes, they all did pretty good on the assessment, but they are all still weak in one area.

Looking more closely, I might see that one question 9, the one where most students got it wrong, the vast majority chose B, but it should have been D.  Now I have an even better perspective.  I can better pinpoint where the problems are.  I can explore why they chose this answer.  I can re-teach with much better effectiveness.

For schools, it is not enough to simply look at the overall percentages of students that score Proficient or Above.  Sure, with that one perspective perhaps we can feel good about our progress.  But we need other perspectives to show us where the weaknesses are.  Weak students.  Weak instruction. Weak professional development.  And more.

So I’m going to smile when I look in the mirror and see how far I’ve come.  But I’m going to keep looking down to remind me how far I need to go.

Its all a matter of perspective.

As an English teacher, even I can get caught up in forgetting that “data” is plural.  We use it interchangeably as both singular and plural all the time.  However, the singular version is “datum.”  But datum doesn’t have quite the sex appeal that data has, so we just overuse the word in an effort to sound more intelligent.  Myself included.

There are two areas, more than any others, where data needs to be recognized as plural.  They are weight loss and education.  Well, OK, they are really important to me right now.

Take a look at this chart:

This is a pretty simple weight loss chart.  I updated just before starting this post.  I have multiple points of data that indicate I am on the right track.  It demonstrates both where I am in relationship to my goal (210 pounds at the end of 30 days).  It also demonstrates my progress along the way from one point to another.  It has multiple assessment indicators.  I can look at it and see that I am on track.  I don’t mind the plateaus or the slight gains on one day or another because overall I am doing what I set out to do at the pace I wanted it done.

As a teacher, I often get frustrated when a parent comes to me and says, “I see Billy Bob made a C on his last quiz.  He’s never made a C before.  What can he do to change that grade?”  This is a concerned parent.  It is the kind of parent I want my students to have.  But the parent is exchanging data for datum.  One point in time.

My guess is that the student has never been a 6th grader before either.  I would also guess that the student has never studied this concept before in earlier grades.  More than likely, I’m already aware that this student made a C when he should have made an A.  How can I know what happened with just one point on a grade chart?

I don’t just need multiple data points.  I need multiple types of data.

I can look at that chart above and know, in my head, that the facts indicate I’m doing exactly what I set out to do.  But it often doesn’t feel like I am.  So I use other measures.

• I have moved up one notch on my belt, so I know Ive lost at least an inch in my waist
• At least one pair of pants that were previously cutting off circulation to my legs are now very loose when I put them on
• Some of the shirts that looked alright while standing now also look OK when I sit down (fat bulges when you sit you know)
• Yesterday I took a picture of myself in the mirror (wearing one of those shirts) and compared it to a picture I had in the same shirt 15 pounds ago.  Its hard to see the day to day changes, but that picture screamed, “Way to go!”

We should be prepared to do the same in the classroom.  Why did Billy Bob make a C on this test?  Well, here are some end of chapter questions we assigned and Billy Bob was struggling with them.  I asked Billy Bob to write his own test question about this topic and it was clear that he didn’t really understand the problem.  After the test was over, I chose three questions Billy Bob missed and asked him to write down for me how he thought this through, step-by-step, so I could see where the disconnect is.

If I have multiple ways of assessing progress, I shouldn’t be backed into a corner of “change the grade or I report you to the principal.”  That test is over.  Billy Bob can’t un-ring the bell.  And yes, that “C” is going to lower his overall GPA at the end of the grading period.  But I’m much more concerned that Billy Bob demonstrate learning than making sure his GPA is inflated to help his self-esteem.

Let’s face it.  I could put any weight I want in that graph above.  The scale says I weight 225.2?  That’s not fair.  I stayed within my calorie limits.  I stayed out of the refrigerator.  I went to J. Alexanders for Father’s Day and didn’t have the carrot cake!  I deserve a bigger weight loss than that.

So I change the number.

But it won’t change the outcome.

Or the facts.

I have now completed the first six days of my HCG Hormone Therapy diet.  I have to admit it has been a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Of course, in a perfect world I would have followed the diet to the letter.  However, this world (currently) is far from perfect, and I’ll be the first to admit that I was in situations where I tried to do the best I could, but I knew I wasn’t following the guidelines (or restrictions depending on your point of view) to the letter.

The chart to the left demonstrates how the weight came off over the past week.  The first two days represent those “load” days I through which I struggled to eat everything I could possibly fit in my stomach without throwing up.

After that, I have been on a 500 calorie a day diet.  So I lost 10 pounds in 4 days.  I weighed in at the clinic and got huge congratulations and high fives and fist pumps.

It felt really good.

Then I had to go to a conference Friday night and all day Saturday.  I was having to pick and choose food without being able to weigh it.  I tried really hard to control portions.  I didn’t have access to enough water.  The list could go on and on.  The end result is that I gained 1 to 2 pounds back and stayed there for 2 days.

If I was concentrating on the short term, I would have been greatly discouraged (ok, truth be told I was a little discouraged).  But then I thought, “Tim, 9 pounds in 6 days ain’t bad.”

That’s when I decided it wasn’t enough to write my weight down every day.  I’m a techie after all.  I did what techies do.  I created a chart to help me look at the long term.  My goal at the end of 30 days is to be down 30 pounds.  That’s doable according to the litearture associated with this plan.  That would put me at 210 pounds.  I would be within 20 pounds of my ultimate goal of 190.

Based on the trendline of the first few days, you can see that I would be well beyond my goal.

If I looked solely had one data point, or one small set of data points, I might not know how doable this is.  That might lead to burnout and cause me to give up.  But, looking at the long term tends to still drive me on.  While I am eating one day at a time, I’m not concentrating on one day at a time.  I have to think long term.

I’ve seen this mistake made in school.  Kids (or parents) look at one test score.  They freak out.  They feel bad about themselves.  They think they are stupid.  Immediately, they want to create more work for the teacher by asking for extra credit.  If we could show them the long term effects of all their data points, perhaps they would know that this one hiccup is just that: a hiccup.

TCAP is often viewed that way.  One data point on one day.  And to some extent that’s true.  And like my diet, sometimees external factors enter into the formulation of the end result.  Kids don’t eat breakfast.  They don’t get enough sleep.  They had a fight with a parent or a sibling on the way to school.  They broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend.  Teachers have put so much pressure on them that they choke at clutch time.  This list goes on and on as well.

I’m not saying TCAP is good or bad.  I’ve studied assessment for a long time.  I’m a fan.  Here are the long term things I look at:

• How does this year’s TCAP score for this student compare to last year’s score?
• How does the TCAP score for this student compare to the three benchmark tests he or she took during the year?
• Is there a connection to the TCAP result (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the child’s GPA?
• If the answer to that last question is no, then we have to ask if the teacher is setting the child up for a feeling of failure because the “A” or the “B” came too easily.
• If the child is Proficient overall, are there areas where he or she is Basic? or Advanced?  And what can I do with that?
• How do the scores of all my students look?  I might not have a done a great job with one, but I may find I did do a great job with 10.

These are just a few of the ways to think about testing in the long term sense.  What questions do you ask?

If you’ve been reading my blog over the last few days you know that I started a (new) diet.  Yes.  Another one.  I’ve been on a bunch.  I started gaining weight when my family moved to Marion, IN, in the middle of my 7th grade year.  My whole life came to a full stop that year.  I went from an outside, run-around-the-neighborhood, ride-my-bike kind of guy to a stay-in-the-house-and-watch-tv-and eat-and-eat-and-eat kind of guy.

I started Weight Watchers in junior high.  I’ve been on Atkins.  I’ve done south Beach.  I’ve hired trainers.  I’ve had gym and YMCA memberships.  I own a treadmill, weights, weight bench, jump rope, pull up bar, and kick boxing stand.  I have an entire room dedicated to working out.  I forget what it looks like.  I keep the door shut.

I’ve lost weight.  Gained more.  Lost all that.  Gained more.  Lost again… you get the picture.

I have three clothing sizes in my closets.  Ideal, a little bigger, and current.

I eat out all the time. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner.  I watch too much NCIS and Law and Order.  I spent way too much time on my laptop and iPad.

But recently I decided to try something completely new to me.  I needed a jump start.  Not a long term fix.  I just needed something that would show me the weight could come off.  So I signed up for HCG hormone injections. Yeah, the pregnancy hormone.  It sounded interesting.

I talked with the spokewoman at the local clinic that sponsors this plan.  She had lost 63 pounds.  She explained how I would be injecting myself daily with HCG.  This hormone releases the nutrients stored in long-term fat cells.  It is the hormone pregnant women release that frees up nutrients in their body to feed their baby in the womb.  Interesting, I thought.

Then she said, “So here is a sample of a diet plan.  You will be eating 500 calories a day….”  I think my ears started ringing about then.  I’m not sure I heard the next few sentences.  500 calories?  Are they nuts?

But then I silently chanted one of my many mantras in the back of my head.  “I can do anything for a little while.”

I started last Saturday.  The first two days were pretty simple.  Eat everything you can possible fit inside your mouth.  Eat all day.  Eat anything.  Eat everything.  On Monday I started on 500 calories a day.  I weigh every day, so I weighed on Monday.

On Tuesday I had lost about a half a pound.

On Wednesday I had lost an additional 1 1/2 pounds.

On Thursday I had dropped 2 1/2 more.

Today is Friday.  From 7 AM yesterday to 7 AM this morning I lost an additional 5 pounds.  9 1/2 pounds in 4 days.

And I’ve done it all without feeling like I’m starving.  My body is feeding itself.

Needless to say, after that bit of success, I am more motivated than ever to get through one more day.  Just today.  Then just tomorrow.

As I stood in disbelief on the scales this morning (I had to do the math twice to make sure I wasn’t fooling myself), my heart was racing.  Endorphins were pumping.  I was on a high.

A little later I began to think about those small successes in school.  The kinds of smiles and thrills and shouts of joy I had heard from middle school students who finally figured out how to do or write something that had eluded them up to that point.  All they wanted to do was tell the world how wonderful they felt.  And that small slice of success led them to want to try again tomorrow.  Maybe even try a little harder.

After all, if this much effort <holding my hands about 1 foot apart> got me this far, how far can I get if I try this much <moving hands about 3 inches farther apart>.

We’ll see.

Since I started on a new diet plan to lose 50 pounds, it seems that all my mind focuses on for this blog are things like food, eating, hunger, starvation… so please indulge me for a bit as I work through the beginnings of a new way of living (again).

Last night was a bit of a rough night.  It was the end of the third day of low calorie eating.  I was watching TV and found myself looking longingly at the refrigerator.  I thought about how many nights I have felt the freedom to walk over there and get whatever I wanted to eat.  It didn’t matter if I was hungry or not.  Sometimes flavors get stuck in my head, and no matter how much I eat, I’m not satisfied until that flavor is the one I find.  And to make it even more frustrating, many times I don’t know what the flavor is I’m looking for until I find it.  The refrigerator could be empty by then!

I sat there thinking about my motivation.  Our new school insurance plan had me do a health screening as part of keeping the less expensive of the two policies.  I’m about 50 pounds overweight.  My blood pressure is through the roof. I have no idea what the blood tests have shown yet.  I decided that morning it was time to get my life back in order.  Take a stand.  Hold firm.

For those of you who don’t have a weight problem (either because you burn every single calorie you take in or you simply have the will power to do what’s right), you may not understand what it is like to stand in line at WalMart and look longingly at an Almond Joy bar.  Or how easy it is to cave in to that longing.  Day after day.  Until at some point, you are making excuses to go buy something at WalMart so you can get a candy bar.

So, today I am motivated.  Today.  As Richard Dreyfuss’ character says in What About Bill?, “Baby steps.”

In times past I’ve been motivated because I spent a lot of money on a plan.  I wasn’t going to let that money go to waste.  (OK, the plan I’m on now is not inexpensive, so I’m sure that is part of my dedication at the moment).  Other times it was because I had an appointment with a trainer, and if I hadn’t lost any weight I was going to be in trouble (my Biggest Loser moments).  But every once in a while, like now, my motivation comes from something deep inside that says this is the right thing to do and if I don’t do it my kids and my grandkids are going to miss me long before they should.

Just because I am planning my own funeral doesn’t mean I want it to happen anytime soon.

Motivation is a complicated thing.  Kids have to be motivated to learn.  Here are just some of the different ways kids are motivated to participate in their own education:

• Their teachers guilt them into doing the work
• They don’t want to look stupid to their classmates
• Their parents reward them with money
• Their teachers reward them with parties and recognitions
• They desire to score the highest on every test, or be the first to finish every assignment
• They are task oriented, and school work is the task at hand
• They have a genuine love of learning, and nothing can stop them (not teachers, not parents, not peers)

Out of those motivations, which do you think will develop life-long learning in that student?  Which one will create within them the kernel of character that will make them a great employee?

I would take issue with those who have told me that it is my job to motivate students. That is short-term thinking and it is killing the education of our children.  It is much more important for teachers to take the time to find out what motivates the student, and guide instruction toward that motivation.

I remember an 8th grader I had a few years ago.  He was constantly in trouble.  He spent about as much time in ISS as he did in the classroom.  And when I gave him an assignment about searching for and writing about a career, he was not interested.  He sat and did nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  He loved to do graffiti drawings.  So I gave him the option of using the Glogster website to present his findings rather than the research style paper I was asking everyone else to do.  Suddenly his light came on.  He found that he actually enjoyed the assignment.

I didn’t motivate him.  I allowed him to use what motivates him.

How are you dealing with this problem of motivation?  I would love to read your comments.

Weight gain is one of those things, like so many in life, that simply doesn’t happen overnight.  It creeps up on you.  Over time, you finally give in to a bigger pair of pants or a shirt that fits just a little better.

Right now, if you looked in my closets, you would find clothes for the 190 pound me, the 210 pound me, the 230 pound me, and even a few for the now 250 pound me.  I used to pride myself on the fact that the heaviest I had ever been was 225.  Then I prided myself on 230.  then I stopped getting on the scales.

There are a number of factors that lead to weight gain.  Lack of exercise.  Taking in more calories than you work off.  Not enough sleep.  Diet drinks.  Too many carbs.  Lack of motivation.  Poor nutrition.  The list is long.  And I think I have hit them all at one time or another.

Research shows that autopsies reveal there really is no such thing as being big boned.

Taking off the weight is much harder than putting it on.   I mean, if it was easy we wouldn’t have an obesity problem now would we?  I mean, you have to work at it.  Exercise.  Eat the right things in the right amounts.  Drink water.

And assess your progress.

Many of our schools across the country are in trouble.  They didn’t just get in trouble overnight.  It was a long process.  We started expecting less of kids in order for all of them to make As in our classes.  We stopped having them exercise during the day (look at the research).  We established a bar of mediocrity and not excellence.  We laid all the responsibility and the blame at the feet of teachers, but we forgot to give them the authority to do what is necessary.

The list is long.  And the ever widening belt of low performance kept expanding.

It isn’t going to be easy to put our schools back on solid footing.  It will take a lot of work.  From teachers.  From administrators.  From parents.  From children.  From government.  From business.  And more.

Hard work. Long hours.  Seemingly little rewards.

And then, like getting on the scale a week after you’ve started eating right and exercising, we will see results.  They may be small.  But they will be positive.

And the sun will shine a little brighter.  And we’ll put our head down and work a little harder.  Struggle a little longer.  Until we weigh our progress again.

We can do this.

Together.