Championship Lessons II

This week I decided that I would follow up the reading from Dabo Sweney and Clemson with an article that included a selection from Urban Meyer.  Though Urban Meyer has many people that doubt his style of leadership and direction, he is proven to be able to build relationships.  Those relationships have allowed him much success.

Urban Meyer wrote a book called Above The Line.  It is a book about his leadership style and philosophy.  Though not all of you are leaders of a team or group, you are the leader in your room for the 42 minutes you see your kids 7periods a day.

Here is an article about Urban Meyer's book about leadership.  It is a quick read.  The ending of the artilce outlines some main points of the book.

Questions To Consider:

1.  "Wining behavior will not thrive in a culture that doesn't support it." How do you create a "winning" culture in your classroom?  How can you support it?
2.  "Do whatever you can to reinforce someone's confidence."  Reinforcing confidence in a student is a great way to build relationships.  Think of a time that you helped reinforce someone's confidence, how did they react?  How did it feel to do so?
3.  "There are many distractions that pull leaders away from investing the time necessary to reflect on the issues and challenges facing their organizations."  What things have been nagging at you?  What may be happening in your classroom that you know needs addressed but you feel you just "don't have time to do so?" 

Championship Lessons

After the recent college football national championship game writer Jon Gordon wrote about lessons he has learned while working with Clemson football.  Jon Gordon is someone that I have written about in this blog before.  You have read multiple pieces from him.  He is the author of the well known book "Energy Bus."

Jon Gordon wrote about 10 lessons he learned from working with Clemson.  I am not going to have you read all of them.  Click here to see three of them.  These are the ones that I think are the most applicable to our setting.

Questions to Consider:

1.  The first point is to "Think Big."  Check out Dabo Sweeney's response to the board members statement about creating a great program like other great programs.  How can you employ a mind set like this of expectations in your classroom?  How long will it take for students to buy into it?
2. Success takes time.  Anyone that has had success knows that.  Success without work is not long lived.  What are you working on now? What success are you working towards?  What are you frustrated with now?  Believe. Trust. Work. Grow. Improve
3.  The trophies are great but Dabo Sweeney realizes that it is his duty to do more with his kids.  What trophies do our students see?  What is it that matters more than the trophies in our classrooms?

Tough Conversations

I can't take credit for finding this article.  Ben George tweeted this article out through the athletics twitter feed.  It is an article that seems to be getting some play throughout the high school sports scene.  It is not necessarily an article, but more of a blog post about an experience.

Here is the article.

Though it is a reading about sports, please take the time to read it.  I find it to be more of an article about "tough conversations."

Questions To Consider:
1.  Maybe you are not a sports person, have you felt like the writer in some situation?  Maybe it was in a theater setting or a audition setting.  What would you say to that student that comes to you and starts wailing?
2.  In most all cases, listening is much more important than talking.  Listening leads, most times, into the correct response or answer to a question.  Reflect on your listening practices, are you a good listener?  Do you make your listening productive?
3.  How do you handle tough conversations?  Avoid them?  What way would you like to handle tough conversations?

The Most Important 8 Minutes

I found this article while looking through some articles about student engagement on the edutopia website (edutopia.org).

One of my goals of this blog is to provide you with resources that make you think a little bit.  This article is by an AP English teacher from New Jersey.  A side note, if at any time you feel you would like to write a "look what I am doing article" and submit it to edutopia, that is possible.  Their website gives direction on how to do that.

The article talks about the first and last 8 minutes in a class period and how they are used.  I would encourage you to read the short article.

Questions To Consider:

1.  Do you find yourself using the first and last eight minutes effectively?
2.  Do you have routines for the first and last eight minutes?
3.  What do you think about having students share successes or share out something positive that someone has done for them?