It's going to be okay.

The other day I was reminded of making a mistake when I was publishing on social media. I quickly was embarrassed and disappointed in the fact that I made such a silly mistake. After a moment of feeling this way, I moved on realizing that I can't go back to fix it. Instead,I focused on learning from my error and trying not to make the same mistakes in the future.

If I look back on my life, I can recall many mistakes and failures. In fact, if you were to ask my girls they could share my many famous mistakes. Because we discuss our mistakes in our family, my girls often ask me to retell some of their favorites, and then we laugh. Here are a couple of the highlights, or maybe I should call them low lights.

• Driving over a parking curb. I was with a few of my high school buddies and we just finished hitting some balls at a driving range. We pilled into a Volkswagen Rabbit that I shared with my sister. There wasn't a car in the parking space in front of us so I put the car into first gear, let the clutch out, and much to my surprise up and over we went over the parking curb. Then we got stuck. That was so embarrassing, and man did my friends laugh! After several minutes of enduring their laughter they helped me and luckily we were able to get the car unstuck.

•  Breaking my wrist sledding down the stairs. When I was in middle school my younger sister and I used to take a small board and ride it down the stairs. At the bottom of the staircase was an orange buffet cabinet. To avoid crashing into the buffet cabinet, we would grab onto the railing at the last second. After dozens of successful attempts I was at the top of the stairs ready to go again. My sister gave me a push and about halfway down the stairs I fell off of the board and tumbled down. I braced myself to avoid hitting the buffet cabinet and heard a pop in my wrist. 

I probably could go on and on about the thousands of mistakes I have made in my life and I am pretty sure many of them were avoidable (like riding over my principal's dog and crashing into a lady coming out of the beauty parlor when I was on  my bike). One thing I learned is that it may seem pretty bleak in the moment, but it does get better and you can move forward.

I was recently listening to a podcast and I was struck with what I heard. We can have a tremendous impact on our students based on what we say and how we respond to them when they mess up or make frequent mistakes. The following quote comes from In the Loop Podcast Episode 248. In the podcast Andy Andrews is talking about his son. 

If you want to pick out things (your ADD child does) that aren’t like everybody else, you could talk to him about it all day long. And you could turn this happy, awesome, sensitive kid into a quivering mass of jelly. You could take this kid and destroy his belief in himself, destroy his imagination.

What I took away from this statement is the fact that students will learn how to respond to their own mistakes or shortcomings by the way we respond to them. If we are quick to point out their errors or mistakes, students will stop trying. They will stop taking risks. If we show grace and understanding while assisting students to learn from their mistakes, students will grow into the person they are meant to be. 

Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome, in their book Kids Deserve It, write about the influence teachers have and explain, "We have the power to tear down or build up children who walk into our lives every day." 

What you say matters! How you respond matters! As you think about the students in your room who make those mistakes, what will you do to build them up? How will you support them as they struggle to learn? What will you do so students believe in themselves? How will you foster students imagination instead of destroying it? How will students know it is going to be okay?

Not one of us is perfect. We will mess up.and mistakes happen. It is not about making every effort to avoid  a mistake, rather it is how respond when we make a mistake that matters.

Be a fan!

Recently I took my oldest to her first Cubs game and we sat in the bleachers. It was a lot of fun and I was able to share with her my love for the Cubs. It got me thinking about what being a fan means to me.

Living in the suburbs of Chicago you have two baseball teams to choose from to devote your fandom. You give you loyalty and devotion to the  Cubs or White Sox. I happened to become a fan of the Cubs. I can remember being 11 years old during the '84 season only to see the team loose to the Padres in the playoffs. Then there was the '89 season and a loss to the Giants in the playoffs. After that season there was a long drought until '98 and a loss to the Braves in the playoffs. In '02 there was the infamous Bartman game. The Cubs 5 outs away from a World Series appearance only to lose to the Marlins in the playoffs. The '07 and '08 seasons ended in similar fashion, getting blitzed in the first round of the playoffs. Then last year, a magical season where the team outperformed expectations and made it to the National League Championship Series. Now I see my team has the best record in baseball. Who knows, maybe this will be the year!

Being a life long Cubs fan has brought many great memories, but it has also brought disappointment and heartache. When I was much younger I would be watching a game and if they started to lose I would turn off the TV in frustration. I would easily give up on them and lose hope. I used to say I could never be the manager because if a player made a costly mistake I would want to kick them off the team. With that approach it wouldn't take very long for the team to run out of players.

Being a fan of a team can drive you crazy. One minute you are going nuts because of a great play and the next moment you are screaming out of frustration when things are not going your teams way. It can feel that way at times in your classroom or in your school. Great things happen and you are pumped and so excited and then something doesn't work out and you can get discouraged.

As I think about my role as a principal, I need to be the biggest fan of our students and teachers. I can't turn off the TV when I get upset. I can't walk away. I can't lose hope. I need to be their fan everyday. I need to cheer on their efforts and celebrate their successes. I need to be their biggest fan.

Tips for teachers to be the biggest fan of your students:

1. Celebrate student learning. Students need their teachers to be cheerleaders. To encourage them to try harder, to put in more effort, to work longer. They need teachers to celebrate their accomplishments and to recognize their efforts. Celebrating student learners changes the culture and dynamics of a classroom.

2. Spend time getting to know your students. John Hattie's works tells us of the importance of the student-teacher relationship. In Teach Like a Pirate, Dave Burgess makes the case of taking time at the beginning of the year to build rapport with students and how that sets the tone for the school year. Teachers can get to know their students by eating lunch with students, playing at recess, asking students about their weekends. There are many ways to get to know students. Let them know you are taking an interest in who they are as learner and as a person.

3. Create and environment for students to be risk takers. Students come to us with a natural sense of curiosity and desire to create. Classrooms need to be places where students take risks and create. When teachers set up a classroom environment where student creativity and risk taking is welcomed; a culture is created where students flourish.

4. Provide feedback. Being a fan of a student means that you are providing feedback about their learning. Not just praising, but giving them meaningful and actionable feedback. Sharing with students what you notice they do well and areas where they still have work to do. Being a fan means being honest and supportive of students and their learning.

Tips for administrators to be the biggest fan of your teachers:

1. Build relationships. Developing this relational culture takes time. In their book  The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work, Amible & Kramer share how the small wins matter to people. They build momentum and keep people moving. Timothy Kanold, in The five disciplines of PLC leaders, describes the importance for leaders to create a relational culture. Leaders need to connect with teachers and create the atmosphere for teachers to be able to connect with one another. 

2. Celebrate teachers. A talented principal recognizes these moments and knows when to celebrate and recognize them. Richard  DuFour in his latest book, In praise of American educators and how they can become even better states, “Effective principals will not wait for monumental accomplishments before celebrating”.  A culture of celebration and recognition leads to developing further trust among the members of a school.

3. Provide clarity. Providing clarity is so key in making sure teams are working on the right things. A good principal establishes, along with the leadership team, goals and the actions teachers will take to achieve the goals. They also give teams autonomy on how they will implement those actions on their team and in their classrooms.

4. Give teachers space and time to be creative.  Rosenhotz, in Teacher's workplace: The social organization of schools, found that teachers’ regard for their work resides in their schools and those conditions that allow them to feel empowered, fulfilled, and keeps them reaching for new opportunities and challenges. Principals need to provide time and space for teachers to do their work and to demonstrate through their actions that they trust the teachers by giving them that autonomy. Providing teachers autonomy and trusting them as professionals builds stronger relationships

Tim McDermott

Go for it!

Back when I was in high school Nike released its Just Do It ad campaign, The spirit of this campaign was to get people out there and go for it. To stop sitting on the sidelines and get in the game. To go for it. I gravitated to the slogan Just Do It as it kind of spoke to me to take a risk and go for it when I had some uncertainty about a decision that needed to be made. Should I give up my summers to be a camp counselor at Silver Birch Ranch? Should I change my mind about which college to attend and move across the country to go to Arizona State University? Should I become active on Twitter? Should I start blogging?

Perhaps the best example of living out the theme of Just Do It happened almost twenty years ago. I had just started dating a great girl and we both lived in Arizona. We discovered that each of us was planning to visit our respective family back in the Chicago suburbs during the same week. Jenna had flown back and I was set to fly out a few days later. I was going to use a non reservation ticket, however when I arrived at the America West gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. The gate was crowded and I soon realized that I would not be getting on the flight that day and had a very slim chance of flying out the next day. I was super bummed because we had planned to meet up in Chicago and  I really wanted to see Jenna. I mulled over my options and quickly decided that I would drive the 1800 miles. So I jumped into my Volkswagen Cabriolet and headed out of town. I drove straight through, only stopping for gas and to use the bathroom. Everyone I knew thought I was crazy to drive across the country by myself. I took a chance. It was the best decision I ever made.  During those two weeks back in Chicago I fell in love with my best friend. I took a chance. I followed that slogan- Just Do It and it made a world of difference. The following summer we got married.

In thinking about your school, your classroom, your students, How will you Just Do It this year? What will you be willing to try? How will embrace a change? What will you do when you face some adversity? What new learning will you do for yourself to be the best you can be for your students?

In twenty years from now what will you remember? How will you reflect on the time you had with students? What will you remember doing that was out of your comfort zone? What will be your Just Do It moment?

Every year we have the honor and privilege of working with students. They deserve our best and for us to try new things, to continually seek ways to engage them, to connect with them, to inspire them, and to believe in them.

If you Just Do It you will not regret it. Stepping out of your comfort zone will be the one of the best decisions you will ever make.

Tim McDermott