One Moment in Time– Whitney Houston
Once in a Lifetime– Talking Heads
One Way or Another– Blondie
One Love– Bob Marley
One– Three Dog Night
Once– Pearl Jam
One– Metallica
One– U2
One, Singular Sensation… for years, musicians have embraced the message and power of one. It’s about time educators do as well.
Mistakes I Made in the Spring of 2020
I did not embrace the idea of the power of just one until recently. This past spring, I wanted to do all the things! I wanted to create three videos a day for my students, share links to multiple sites for them to explore, and send multiple emails a week to caregivers to make sure they were informed. I completely burnt out in trying to achieve this. Plus, this wasn’t what my students or their caregivers even wanted or needed.
I wanted to do all the things and was neither emotionally or even physically equipped to do most of them. I tried to take everything on, so the result was that nothing went as well as I intended or hoped. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely successes this past spring, but for this series, I’m deeply reflecting on the things that weren’t successes in order to turn them around.
So, through reflection and a great deal of discussion with colleagues, students, and their caregivers, I’ve really embraced the idea of just one. Often times, all it takes is just one in life, right… Just one date with the right potential partner. Just one song to spark a love of a musician. Just one conversation to know you’ve found a friend for life. I really should have embraced this idea with distance teaching in the spring, but now I know better. So, I plan to fully embody the idea of just one this fall.
What I Plan to do in the Fall of 2020
In the spirit of this post, this is going to be a short, bullet-pointed section for ease of reading. Here we go…
My motto for the fall is just one! Repeat after me, friends- just one!
- Just one email to caregivers each week to provide needed information without inducing more overwhelm. As I mentioned in lesson #3 earlier in the series, my team and I are going to choose a predictable time each week to send the email and let caregivers know to expect it then.
- Just one time to check email in the morning and one time in the afternoon each day. Constantly checking email is just not necessary, and can often be anxiety inducing. Just once in the morning and once in the afternoon is all that’s needed to get the job done.
- Just one Learning Management System (LMS)- and keep it clean and simple for ease of use. Fancy and cute can be fun, but we have to make sure whatever we create is easy for kids and caregivers to navigate. If it’s not, it’s more for the teacher than the student.
- Just one supply pick-up or drop-off with all-the-things included for the first month of school. I’m really hoping schools make plans for this to take place for both ease of teachers in their planning and families in acquiring learning materials for their children. For example, my school is planning a supply pick-up over two days. For families who can’t get to school, my team and I plan to drop supplies off for our students.
- Just one writing notebook– that’s all they need to make their writing their own to start.
- Just one web based system for digitally producing writing to start- my preference is all that is included in the Google Suite: Docs, Slides, etc. Eventually, once things settle, more can be learned and introduced. Students can even introduce them to us- on their time!
- Just one paper reading notebook to start.
- Just one Google doc to create a digital reading notebook of sorts (I plan to describe this in a post bit later in August or early September!).
- Just one new procedure each day. At the beginning of the school year, we are often tempted to teach all of our procedures in one or two days. Really, there is no need. Our time will better be spent if we focus on building community, getting to know our students, and most importantly, putting supports in place for them to get to know each other. There’s more than enough time to teach that new procedure (or those 10 new procedures) another day.
- All of the just ones really add up. This list alone is quite a bit for kids and caregivers to manage. As we all know, this is not even close to an exhaustive list. Let’s all make the choice to be intentional in our messaging, lesson delivery, and amount of stuff required for our kids and families as they all embark on their school journeys alongside us this fall.
My only exception to the just one idea is with books. Kids need books. They need more than just one to start. In fact, they need a flood of books and other reading material as soon as possible! We can make it happen. I’ll discuss this in depth in lesson #11.
One Day More…
Post #11 is coming up on Friday! Friday’s writing will discuss getting books and reading material in kids hands right away.
All posts in this blog series will be housed here: 15 lessons learned for the 2020-21 School Year, July 20-August 7th Click on the follow this blog link to have the posts delivered to your inbox each day, or check back tomorrow!
If you are a music nerd like me, here the songs referenced in this post…
One Moment in Time– Whitney Houston
Once in a Lifetime– Talking Heads
One Way or Another– Blondie
One Love– Bob Marley
One– Three Dog Night
Once– Pearl Jam
One– Metallica
One– U2
One– A Chorus Line
One Day More– Les Miserables
Christina Nosek Literacy: Building Community in Elementary Education 