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• Elona Hartjes, MEd (Candidate), Ontario Certified Teacher

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At our school, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to keep at-risk kids in school so they’ll graduate. As I always tell students, a high school diploma doesn’t guarantee a good job, but if you don’t have a diploma you could be closing doors of opportunity. I hadn’t really thought about how much money we’d lose, if students didn’t graduate. That was, until I read this

Each Texas high school dropout costs the state $3,168 a year in lost revenue and higher spending on Medicaid and prisons, according to a study … partly conducted by the Indianapolis-based Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation.

 

$3,168 a year in lost revenue and higher spending on health care and prisons! That’s for one year, year after year. I remember reading that about 30% of students drop out of school before they graduate. So if I extrapolate from those statistics, it could mean that at my school about 90 grade nine students might not graduate and that could cost us $285 120 a year , just in lost revenue. (That’s $US, not $CAN) That’s a lot of money, and that’s just at my school. There are over 30 high schools in my district so that means we could be losing $8 553 600 a year. Ooh, my goodness!

Maybe I should show that figure, $8 553 600, to the people who are always saying we should kick those kids out of school if they don’t want to toe the line? Maybe that’s why our provincial government is putting money back into education to fund new programs geared to the at-risk kids who feel there’s nothing for them at school. Maybe, just maybe.

I’ve talked about leadership qualities here, and now I think it would be interesting to examine leadership experiences. I’d like to invite people to consider the questions Doug asks us to reflect upon

Relative to your leadership role…

- What’s working well?

- What brings you great pride and joy?

- How have you made a difference for good in the lives of those you serve?

- What brings you quiet satisfaction?

- What have you learned over the last few months?

- How can you use this information (above) to move your organization forward

I’m a special education specialist in behaviour and give support to special education and at-risk students and their teachers. My reflections here will be a function of that role.

1. What’s working well ? -Asking teachers what they want to do and how I can help them when they are have problems with kids in the classroom.

2. What brings me great pride and joy? – When teachers of at-risks students try the approaches and strategies I suggest and come back to tell me they worked.

3. How have I made a difference for the good in the lives of others?- I’ve mentored other teachers, and they’ve been able to become more effective teachers so it’s a win-win situation for the teacher and the students.

4. What brings me satisfaction?- I’ve been able to share my insight and experience with others to effect change.

5. What have I learned?- I’ve learned that my blog has been a good way to mentor teachers because teachers have told me it has been.

6. How can I use this information to move my organization forward?- I intend to speak at meetings and conferences about the potential of blogs and the Internet as a source of professional development and support.

Now, I’d like to extend the invitation to the following people who I believe would have really interesting reflections to share relative to their leadership roles, and perhaps they could invite seven others that they know to share their reflections as well. (I’ve learned about memes)

Todd- Thoughts On Teaching
Doug- Positive Psychology News Daily
Senia-Positive Psycholog Blog
Sherri- Flourishing Schools
Dan- dy/dan
Doug- teaching.mrbelshaw.co
Kelly- Educational Discourse

Recently I wrote about leadership qualities here . At the time, I was responding to a challenge to identify the leadership qualities that I had that others may not have known about. I thought for a while and came up with a list of qualities informed by my “unique” sense of humour. Today, thanks to Doug Turner, I found a quality I had but didn’t think of it in terms of a leadership quality. Doug answered a question that I didn’t even ask: what leadership quality do you have that you are not aware of having? I found out it’s the quality of focusing on the positive. It’s true. It’s really almost a fault of mine. I get teased about it.

Doug says he’s noticed

…that the leaders who continue to languish are still focused on the negative while the leaders who are flourishing – and happy – leverage the positive and keep the negative in perspective.

It makes sense to me when I think about it. I ‘ve been teaching at- risk kids with and without behaviour issues for over twenty years. I have chosen to do that. How have I been able to do thids for so long? I have chosen to focus on their their strengths and not their weaknesses. I’m forever telling them not to define themselves by their weaknesses. I help them discover their strengths and show them how they can choose to use these strengths to be successful.

Today after work, a group of us were talking about the troubled, troublesome and troubling kids we have in our classes that make our classes so difficult to teach. I told them that I choose to look at these kids in a positive light. They’re just kids. They have much to learn about themselves and how to negotiate their way through life more successfully. I have seen enough kids turn their lives around to keep me focusing on the positive. My glass is definately more than half full.

We’re a couple of weeks into the new semester and classroom teachers are starting to come to see me to ask for advice. Mostly they’re asking what they can do to help the spec. ed. kids in their classroom. Today, I had a few questions about ADHD kids. You know, the kids who can’t seem to sit still. I tell these kids that their brains are working too well.( I know my explanation is highly nontechnical and may be only partly right, but it makes the point) They notice everything- a pencil that get’s dropped, a person walking past in the hall , a bird flying by the window, the noise of the fan , the fact that I have chalk on my sweater, etc. Their brain does not filter things out. They notice it all. Well, if you notice everything, it’s hard to stay focused on anything. You can’t , so you move from one thing to another and that looks like not paying attention to the teacher, not focusing on your work etc. But really, you’re focussing on everything.

Students understand the problem quite well when I put it this way. I tell them that it would help them if they could sit in the class so as to minimize distractions. Don’t sit near the door, the window, the pencil sharpener , any other figidty kids or anywhere there’s movement. Personally, I can’t stand it when people walk by in the hall when I’m working which is a wee bit of a problem since I’m a teacher. I find movement very distracting, but I’ve learned to cope. I shut the classroom door part way so I can’t see the people walking by. I also tell teachers and kids that the kids should be listening to music to filter out all the other distractions. When a student puts on their earphones their music is like white noise and lets them concentrate on their work. Of course they can’t listen to music when a teacher is teaching, then they need to make eye contact with the teacher to help limit the distractions. I’ve written about this here before, and I’m still arguing about it at work.

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  These are my personal views and not those of my employer.