Winning streaks

As a fan of professional sports, I'm well aware of streaks. There are winning streaks, losing streaks, and hitting streaks. There are hot streaks and cold streaks. Pretty much, as long as someone can do something with consistency, they can go on a streak.On paper, they're just patterns, but streaks change attitudes, they change culture...they're contagious.

The above is a list of current streaks for all 30 teams in the National Basketball Association. They are listed in order of the team's overall record. But you know what's cool about that? Four of the top seven teams are on current losing streaks, while three of the worst six teams are on winning streaks. That's the thing about streaks....they gain momentum and can change the course of a team's season. They can bust ballplayers out of slumps and renew their confidence. 

This week I've discussed streaks with my students in an effort to help them understand the importance of noticing patterns in their behavior. I've shared my belief that we have streaks, too. You know, it's that feeling when you say to yourself, "I feel like I'm a passive participant in my own life...like I'm letting life happen to me...like, if I were to be cast in my own life I'd be listed in the credits as brown-haired 8th grade teacher. When we're in slumps like that, we often know what we want to do differently. I wrote about this in last week's post. Recently, when I've wanted to do something new and commit to it--to start a new pattern in my behavior--I start a list of numbers. Let me explain.

Imagine you want to do a better job of consistently flossing your teeth before bed. Just start a list and after you floss, write the number one. Track your flossing "streak" by writing the number two the next day. Maybe you miss a day, or run out of floss, or just can't find the time. That's okay, but your streak is over. The next day, you start over again by writing the number one. Once you get a nice, long streak, though, going back to one feels awful. 

The University of Connecticut women's basketball team has had three winning streaks of over 70 games since the 2000-2001 season. Their current streak has reached 94 games. The team has also won four straight national championships. You know why? Because they hate going back to zero. But I guarantee that the morning they do, they just figure, "time to start another streak."

My students have patterns they want to change, but changing a pattern can be tough. For some students it's a lack of class participation ("Just start a streak of making one comment in class each day and write it down," I suggest), while for others it is staying organized or printing off their homework before class begins. For me, I've decided to start sharing an "I've noticed..." moment with at least one student each day. As a result, I spend all morning trying to notice things about my students, seeking out opportunities to send the message that "I see you." This heightened awareness has made me more responsive and has raised my emotional intelligence. I'm noticing more changes in my students' emotions because I need to acknowledge someone...at first, I needed to notice them because I didn't want my little notebook to start again with the number 1, but now the streak is simply growing because it's become a part of me, a part of my rhythm, my routine, my identity.

I've also started organizing something in my life for five minutes each day. One day it's the medicine cabinet in my bathroom, the next it's my desk at school, or a bookshelf, or the trunk of my car. Just five minutes, but it's a pattern. A streak. A way of keeping myself accountable for being the protagonist of my own life.

What Lefty Layups Can Teach Us About Learning (And Teaching!)

Whenever I encounter a student who doesn't want to fail, who allows perfectionism to reign over their very existence, I think about left-handed layups.

I can vividly recall, as a young basketball player, watching my teammates (myself included) continuously dismiss the opportunity to take an open layup with their left hand simply because they weren't adept at hitting the shot. One might think that practice would be the opportunity to hone the skill, but most of my teammates didn't want to mess it up...they didn't want to fail on a stage.

I see lefty layup moments in my students all the time. Opportunities to fail, to struggle, to improve and develop being side-stepped in favor of an opportunity to guarantee success.


Earlier this week I asked my students to respond to the following prompt:

If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any (human) quality or ability, what would it be?

I wanted to get them thinking about our foibles and blemishes as humans, about our flaws, about our character. As English teachers, we discuss these things as they pertain to literary characters all the time. We look at strengths and, by dissecting them, we begin to see that a perceived strength can often reveal a weakness as well (courage or fearlessness can often reveal a lack of mindfulness or patience, for example).

In this exercise, though, I wanted my students to hold up a mirror. I wanted them to think about the areas they see as opportunities to improve. I wanted them to think about abilities that aren't superhuman, but that can be honed and practiced. That fit into the growth mindset of their learning.

The reality is that we can't wake up tomorrow being more resilient students, more confident speakers, or having better organization skills. We can't become better listeners, or develop sincere compassion overnight. What we can do, though, is begin to grow our awareness.

My students had many things they wish they could change about themselves. They were thoughtful in the exercise, and most of them were willing to share.

One student admitted that she wished she could be more brave...that she owns her identity as a fraidy cat.

The ironic thing about it, though, is that she was being brave in that moment...by digging into the uncomfortable work of being vulnerable in front of others, she was displaying remarkable fortitude. Now, though, I have the incredible opportunity to connect with this student each day and ask her how she's been brave today, or encourage her: "You're so brave!"

For my student who wants to be better organized (this was my goal as well!) I can sit beside him during study hall and ask, "Hey, how's the organization going? Can I help you think about putting all the pieces in place?"

Many of my students wanted to be more confident speakers and contributors in class. With these students in mind, I orchestrated a "silent conversation" in the hallway outside my classroom so they could feel "heard," without having to actually speak. I was able to hold them accountable by providing a baby step toward feeling like their views matter. Next, I might affirm them and suggest that they write a few comments they'd like to share in class each evening as part of their homework. Then, the improvisation of speaking "off the cuff" can be eliminated.



The coolest thing about this exercise, though, was less about what I can do to support and uplift my students, and more about their own areas of self-awareness and their support of each other. When teachers ask students, "what are your goals?" they often respond with quantitative, measurable outcomes: I'd like to make honor roll, do better in math, make the varsity baseball team, for example.

By asking them the skills and qualities they wish they could possess, however, the students are able to unconsciously back into the processes they might go through in developing the very outcomes they crave.

Today I am going to model for my students my first step in becoming more organized. Each of my students will have a folder with their name on it in the back of the room where their graded essays, rough drafts, and revisions will live. I will let my students be my accountability partners in my pursuit of being better organized. I'll let them remind me, just as I will remind them. I will try to model vulnerability and lean into my imperfections in the hope that their perfectionist selves will do the same. One of my greatest strengths in the classroom is my ability to improvise...but improvisers are not always great planners and organizers. I don't procrastinate, but I often sort the details out as I go.

I will let them watch me miss lefty layups, and I will ask them to gauge the impact of my development. I will stumble, jumping off the wrong foot, or feebly attempting to eliminate the number of piles that clutter my classroom...but I will let them in and I will allow myself to fail on the stage. And I will let them help me grow.

Life in the pocket

In the first post I ever wrote on this blog, I noted that I felt there just wasn't enough time to do everything I wanted to do.

I admitted, in that post, that the time existed, it was just a matter of using the time well. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review reiterates this idea (but with research!) that we should be managing our energy, rather than our time.

I looked closely at my energy and time management last month. I thought about my purpose, my ambition, my direction. I talked to trusted friends and shared my observations...of myself. It's a weird thing for me--being introspective. I'm bad at it, notoriously out-of-touch with what I'm feeling and how and why. I'd much rather be an emotional packesel (German for burro, or colloquially, the person who carries everyone else's stuff). But when I got in touch with my emotions, I realized I was spreading myself thin, trying to do everything and do it well.

I was the quarterback in the pocket. I was scrambling. I was being the hero. The human highlight film. I was threading the needle, selling jerseys, accumulating sponsorships. I was doing it all. I was awesome.

Then it struck me. Much of my ambition was thinly disguised narcissism. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't like this realization. But I realized something. I realized that--in this football analogy--I wasn't trusting the pocket. I was ignoring my offensive line. I wasn't exhibiting the patience and poise of a veteran quarterback; the one who wants to have a lengthy career. Instead, I was careening headfirst into the end zone, relishing the roar of the crowd at every flashy play...but I wasn't preserving myself, I was too risky, I was doing it all alone. And it just wasn't sustainable.

I realized that the people in my life who meant the most--the ones I wanted to cheer for me and applaud me--were my metaphorical offensive line. They were the ones who were capable of creating the pocket in which I could thrive. The thing is, though, they also include my colleagues, my students. Sometimes I need to hand off responsibility to my colleagues and friends (running backs), whereas other times my job is to collaborate and set others up for success (wide receivers).

Regardless of how I respond, the important thing is that I remain calm in the pocket. When I can do this, I enable my students to stay calm as well. My family functions more effectively when I take time for myself. And often, this means stepping out of responsibility, setting boundaries, turning people down, saying "no"...disappointing people.

Right now I am focusing on trusting my offensive line and waiting for plays to develop. I am listening to my students more intuitively; I am thinking creatively about what inspires me; and I have taken a step back from some of my own pursuits that have a tendency to become self-absorbed and self-fulfilling (while I don't believe I'm narcissistic or selfish, some of my habits, patterns, and hobbies were simply garnering too much of my energy without benefitting others).

So, how are my students helping me in this endeavor? Well they're my offensive line, my wide receivers. I am remaining present and calm in the pocket and trusting our united experience, alongside each other, as an exercise in teamwork, not in my display as a human highlight reel.

The Hack PhD.

I am a pretty ambitious person when it comes to both motivation and pursuit. I like doing things and my brain is always at work. I struggle to rest, and stillness makes me antsy. I am trying to get better at this, to give myself time to think, to step back, consider, mull, marinate.

Nevertheless, with all the ideas I generate it wasn't until recently that I felt confident sharing them with others, collecting feedback, risking failure.

What is an ambitious person if they are unwilling to fail?

In high school I had a quote pinned to my desk:

"A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships were made for."

Another read,

"Ideas are useless if they stay ideas."

So here's an idea I had this week as I returned to the classroom with my students.




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We all have things we're passionate about and our thought lives are uniquely our own. If we were to graph, however, every direction of our mind's wandering, and plot the correlations and relationships between seemingly divergent ideas, would there be some common ground on which to stand?

I've come to the conclusion that the answer is yes. And it is on the foundation of this assumption that I introduce to you an idea.

The idea is inspired, I'm sure, by Logan LaPlante's TED talk about hackschooling, Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist, as well as Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic. But here's the thing: it's also inspired by everything that's ever inspired me, because, well, that's the point.


The Hack PhD.

So, the idea behind the Hack PhD. is that you can push yourself toward becoming an expert in some fascinating field that deeply interests and inspires you. Your inspiration just needs a little organization.

Imagine your brain goes absolutely bananas for the following:

Children's books
Maps
Spoken word poetry
Coffee
Anything having to do with Albrecht Durer


Well, perhaps your PhD would be in the field of

Prepubescent Canonical Cartographic Studies with a concentration in caffeinated oration and Germanic Renaissance motif.

Of course this sounds ridiculous, but how cool would the syllabus be?

Who would the authors be that would inspire this student? What films or TED talks or interviews would they unearth? What would the dissertation be, and how could they seek out connections and relationships between their ideas and those of the people who preceded them in this work? Would their "professors" be living or deceased, and would that even matter?


What would the final essay be? Where would it lead them? What would they learn? What would they share?


Where could these dissertations be housed and collected?

Who would read them?

And what would you learn about someone by merely reading the title of their PhD?

This suggestion does beg the question, but isn't this just what interesting people do? Well, yes, but the idea here is to go beyond self-indulgence and to share ideas with others; it's allowing other people into your sphere of influences. It's about finding other people who love horses and comic books and politics and jellyfish as much as you do and seeking out their "research." It's about getting past the stale nature of academia and hijacking it in a novel way that embraces humor, irony, and a significant measure of levity.

Finland just elected to abolish academic subjects in schools. For anyone aged 16 or older, the purpose will be lateral thinking, learning to learn, and escaping from the silos that incarcerate us. It is more fluid.

We need fluidity.
We need art.
And we need to be inspired in 2017.

It's just an idea, but it's a start...