How to counsel the counselor: Advice from my elementary school students

By Sabrina Bong

Last week, while I was signing yearbooks for some of my students, several of my fifth graders ran up to me and gave me a big hug. After hugging them and telling them that I was so proud of all of their accomplishments, they eagerly asked me what I was going to do and where I was going to be next school year.

“You’re coming back here?” one girl suggested.

“No, Miss Bong, you’re coming to the middle school, right? And then I’ll get to see you there?” one of the boys asked.

After telling my students that I was not staying at the current school, one of the boys excitedly said, “You’re joining the high school! My sister will love you. And then you can stay until I’m done with high school!”

After repeating that I was not sure where I was going to end up, one of the girls said, “Miss Bong, you’ve always given us really good advice. Now we want to give you some of our own.” Each of the eleven students then shared one piece of advice with me. I will treasure the advice that they shared with me, and I feel so proud to have been a part of their lives. They are going to do great things in their lives; I feel so fortunate to know them.

The following are the eleven pieces of advice I received:

1.  Always be yourself. Adults need to hear that too because they have peer pressure as well. You’re cool the way you are.
2. If it’s your fault, be honest. The principal always finds out if you’re lying.
3. Focus on the good stuff, whether that’s how students are acting in class or just in general. Remember that there is always something great that happens every day! You just need to think about it.
4. Have good communication with everyone. It’ll prevent a lot of problems from happening.
5. Don’t forget what it’s like to be in elementary school. It can be really tough sometimes! Maybe the reason we aren’t paying attention in class is because something else in happening in our lives.
6. Think before you act.
7. You’ll learn something new every day, even if you don’t want to. (I really laughed when I heard this!)
8. Never stop believing in your students.
9. Be thankful. Say thank you to everyone.
10. Make sure your students know that going to see the counselor isn’t a punishment; it’s actually a lot of fun!
11. New day, new start. Don’t let what happened yesterday make you feel bad today. Instead, take what you did right yesterday and do it again.

After hearing all of this, I thanked them and gave them all a hug. Then, one of the girls said, “Miss Bong, the students you will work with are really lucky. You’re pretty cool, and they get to work with you every day.” I remember trying my hardest not to cry. These students who knew me for a semester just touched my heart; I hope to live up to their (very high) expectations.

Ongoing Development

By Ryan Krienke

Up until December I had spent the past four years at Marquette University completing two Masters Programs in the department of education. While I could not wait to be done, I already feel a void. It’s not that I don’t have enough to keep me busy (being a principal is a non-stop job). I actually feel the void of not having a set time that I am “forced” to go and meet with colleagues to learn and develop.

While in graduate school, I longed for the days I could stay late in my office to finish a project or to have the weekends free from assigned reading/writing assignments.  Yet it hit me almost instantly after graduation; I was in danger of being in a place of stagnation.  While I have wonderful colleagues to learn from, it is easy to let the day to day grind convince us we don’t have time to read literature, meet for coffee and discuss best practices, attend seminars (on our own time), engage in active research or reflective writing.

What I would propose to all of my colleagues in education,  is that we continually seek out people in similar roles to our own and that we initiate our own professional development. For those of us who are in or have recently finished a program at Marquette, we have an inherent advantage. We have fresh relationships to maintain and utilize for our own growth.

Some of my best memories from graduate school involved  a beverage, a slice of pizza and animated conversations about our readings or class discussions. Why does that have to change once we gain the diploma or license? Yes, we all started our various programs for that all important “piece of paper,” yet I tend to think that the power of places like Marquette is the ability for us to build strong professional and academic bonds with people. In fact, Marquette should be proud, my particular principal cohort intends to meet monthly and engage in a book study, sharing in good high quality professional dialogue. In other words, we plan to continue developing…. I hope you will all do the same… nothing will have a greater impact on the students in this community then professionals who thirst for their own development.

Tuesday Trivia – May 7, 2013

Here it is, Finals Week and the end of another great semester. We know your brains are overworked this week, so how ’bout an easy question?

What year did Dean Henk get his Ed.D. degree?

Claim your chance to win by leaving the correct answer in the comments section below anytime today between 7am – 6pm. And don’t be afraid to play, even if someone has already posted the right answer! One winner will be randomly selected from ALL correct answers after the close of business and announced the following day.  The winner will be posted on our Facebook page and notified by email.  Please note that you must have a valid email address listed in your comment or WordPress profile to win.

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How much do YOU know about Marquette University and the College of Education? Test your knowledge every Tuesday during Tuesday Trivia!

A Tale of Two Scholars (actually three).

By Claudia Felske – One Youtube video + one email + one Facebook post = A Tale of Two Scholars (actually three).

Let me explain.

Suli Breaks, Spoken Word Artist from England, posted a video “Why I Hate School but Love Education” that quickly went viral, nearing the 3 million hits and showing no signs of slowing.

I encountered his video a few days ago when Justin, a high school junior and a former student of mine, emailed to me, explaining: “This describes exactly how I feel about my education.”

The video left me speechless with its heart-heavy indictment of public education. I replied to Justin, coaxing him to explain, which resulted in a lengthy response (“probably the most [I've] ever written,” he reminded me, with a smirk, in the hallway at school).

I then posted the video on my AP English Facebook page with Justin’s tagline: “This is exactly how I feel about my education,” asking my AP English Students (current and former) if they felt the same, which inspired a lengthy Facebook post from Domonic, another former student of mine, currently a college freshman.

Therein lies the genesis of this blogpost: “The Tale of Two Scholars.” Having received their permission to post,  I will now get out of the way, posting their full responses and allowing  students (the most important, most authentic, and least heard critics of education) to speak:

Justin  (High School Junior)

When I was in Waldorf all I wanted was to get out and go to a public high school, but once I started in a public school I hated it and knew that I would be better off in a Waldorf high school. As I look back on my Waldorf education, it was so hands-on and let individuals grow in their own, creative way. In the Waldorf school I was Justin… I was a character… people knew my for who I truly was. In high school I feel more like a number, a letter, a score on a piece of paper that classifies who I am, what classes I can take, and where my future path leads.

 School has been nowhere near what it should have been. If you ask me what I learned today I would most likely tell you something that I learned from one of my peers or read online…not something I learned from my teachers. I am so uninterested in what they are teaching because all I focus on is that I need to pass my next test so I get good grades and can go somewhere with my life in the future. And that’s not what I want my future to be based upon. I am more than that test grade I get at the end of the semester. School should challenge you in ways you want to be challenged; it should still teach you a little of everything but in a way that you can relate to and benefit from.

The solution is that the world needs to wake up and realize that we are the next generation, it is up to them to pass on their life lessons. Also much smaller classes with a much more hands on learning environment. They need to teach us that we are individuals, not just numbers or grades. They need to let us be us without trying to influence our ways. They need to teach us to excel to the greatest WE can be not to the class average. 

Domonic  (College Freshman)

I had a job interview the other day for a summer legal research position. The attorney was telling me about how other attorneys frequently come to him when they’re stuck on a case because he truly believes that there is a way to win every case. For this reason, he told me, he hated specialization and considered it a limitation because someone “may be very good in one area, but if [he’s] in the courtroom with them, [he] will be able to, at some point, out flank them in an area that’s not” their specialty, but still relevant case law.”

I truly believe that all knowledge is power; trivial historical facts may one day help me win a legal case. The Pythagorean Theorem may assist me to…build a garden in my backyard. So to say that students shouldn’t need to learn the details of the Great Compromise or the proper interactions of sine, cosine and tangent, is never something that I’ve personally thought or believed in. Who knows what purpose that knowledge will one day serve in their professional or private lives?  But, at the same time, that’s not to say that knowledge that isn’t taught won’t also serve them well. Certainly the educational system can and should improve in areas that are perhaps more relevant to today’s youth, but I don’t believe that should come at the expense of other basic knowledge. And while I acknowledge I am biased, because I never have believed in memorizing things for a test simply to forget them (because I do believe “it” could one day help me),.

I truly, truly, truly, truly believe the key to fixing this educational “gap” is so much more complex than just the educational system itself (which could also use some work). Why aren’t American students as inspired…no, as driven to succeed as they once were? Why aren’t they going home at night and studying what they’re passionate about, like students in other countries who are academically surpassing us? Even if it’s just reading Wikipedia pages on history or science or law or engineering or journalism, this is gaining vast amounts of knowledge.

So, three things we need to do:

1. Get American youth reading again (not tweets, rather books, or even Wikipedia articles if they must)
2. Re-instill the desire to succeed through their own passion for personal interests outside of school (or in school through EXTRA-CURRICULARS, Problem Based Learning, Independent Study, etc.)
3. Bring those basic facts that will serve them in God knows what capacity in the future, to the point where they’re not cramming them in, but learning them for life. Use things like increased PBL (FrankenTrial anyone?) (also applicable in #2), a redevelopment of the testing system with broader exams on wider amounts of course material, and real world applications (design your dream home using these geometric principles, defend a high profile supreme court case with precedents from historic cases) with the understanding that it may not help them/us be a graphic artist, electrician, engineer, accountant, etc., but it’ll sure help you be a better one, and a better, more rounded person.

Create the hunger.  Feed the hunger.  Fuel the hunger.

Final Thoughts:

I hold Justin and Domonic in high regard. Both are good-natured, intelligent, dynamic young men. And while their thoughts about the education they have received from the same community and same school district differ greatly, they represent points on the spectrum of the diverse student body all educators serve.  As such we must acknowledge the integrity with which they speak, the voices they represent, the songs they sing, the deficiencies they decry.

For the Sulis, the Justins, the Dominics, we have much work to do.

Tuesday Trivia – April 30, 2013

Finally, it’s Spring! In honor of the (hopefully) warmer weather, we’re thinking about gardening and green thumbs:

Where is MU’s urban garden located?

Claim your chance to win by leaving the correct answer in the comments section below anytime today between 7am – 6pm. And don’t be afraid to play, even if someone has already posted the right answer! One winner will be randomly selected from ALL correct answers after the close of business and announced the following day.  The winner will be posted on our Facebook page and notified by email.  Please note that you must have a valid email address listed in your comment or WordPress profile to win.

________________________________

How much do YOU know about Marquette University and the College of Education? Test your knowledge every Tuesday during Tuesday Trivia!

Tuesday Trivia – April 23, 2013

This week is Alumni Awards Week where we honor alumni who embody Marquette’s mission. We are truly proud of all of our students, both current and alumni!

Who is this year’s College of Education Distinguished Alumna of the Year?

Claim your chance to win by leaving the correct answer in the comments section below anytime today between 7am – 6pm. And don’t be afraid to play, even if someone has already posted the right answer! One winner will be randomly selected from ALL correct answers after the close of business and announced the following day.  The winner will be posted on our Facebook page and notified by email.  Please note that you must have a valid email address listed in your comment or WordPress profile to win.

________________________________

How much do YOU know about Marquette University and the College of Education? Test your knowledge every Tuesday during Tuesday Trivia!

Connecting the Dots and Circling the Wagons

By Peggy Wuenstel

There is an exercise, one that I have completed   several times, in several different contexts, that requires you to place your name in the center of a piece of paper. You then proceed to draw increasingly larger concentric circles around the name, labeling each of the groups to which you belong. This might be to increase your sense of belonging, to map the resources at your disposal, or to identify areas for volunteer work.

The largest circles, Living Thing, Child of God, Female, don’t offer much personal definition, but the smaller ones, family, workplace, circle of friends can give us great insight into who we are and who we want to be in the future.

I recently was given the opportunity to join a new circle. Newly re-elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Evers has convened an advisory council of Wisconsin Educators who have been named Wisconsin Teachers of the Year. When these eighteen individuals met last month in Madison to learn along with state leaders in the areas of the upcoming Educator Effectiveness Evaluation system, implementation of Common Core State Standards and the potential impacts of the proposed state budget on Wisconsin’s public schools, I was amazed by the competency and commitment present in that room.

While much of the day was about listening, our questions, comments and sense of direction were also valued. We left with a sense of purpose, which is still coalescing into action on these important issues, but with a sense of obligation to use our collective voices to make a difference in the lives of Wisconsin’s students.

I left with a greater appreciation of the concept of collective voice and the desire to use it more effectively. When we speak alone, it is often difficult to be heard above the background noise and the howling winds of change. When we join together to create a mission statement or speak as one, not only is our voice louder, but the audience who is paying attention is also increased. It is just part of human nature to want to be in on what is happening. No wonder laughter is contagious, and a person staring at the ceiling for no apparent reason is soon joined by others who want to know what is so interesting up there. It’s why our favorite parties are usually the most crowded, busy affairs where there is no room to sit down. It is also why we can be convinced to do things in a crowd that we would never do alone.

That is not to say that this is always a good phenomenon. The cyber-bullying that occurs when students post hateful comments with anonymous screen names seems to encourage a level of meanness that would be unthinkable in face-to-face interactions. The same is true for the comments and personal attacks on websites and in chat rooms that encourage public responses. It is hard to imagine some of those messages being delivered if the writers’ faces were visible and their real names replaced their screen names. Mob mentality, riot level violence and becoming carried away by the maddening crowd are all potential pitfalls to letting the group speak for you and not with you.

That is why it is so essential that our classroom groupings be the right kind of circle for our students to find homes within. With the guidance of a compassionate teacher, students at all levels learn to understand and support each other, to acknowledge and celebrate differences, to mend conflicts and encourage life-long relationships.

Programs such as TRIBES, The Compassionate Classroom, and many others give an outline of setting up these structures in schools all over the country. My Professional Development Plan for this year involved the creation of two social skills groups for students who needed help establishing, maintaining, and evolving within a school-based group of peers. Some are students with special education needs, some are not. Some need help to feel comfortable speaking in a group. Some need guidance on how to let others speak. Our Friends on Friday groups have grown into another circle of support for these students, one that we as teachers helped to draw around them with compassion and skill support.

I participated in a book study group last year organized around the book Creating the School Family by Dr. Becky Bailey.  (Yet another circle to draw.) She offered some outstanding ways to create an oasis of caring and support for students. One of the things that struck home the deepest was her reminder that we must focus on using someone’s name in developing even temporary relationships. It serves several purposes: 1) retention; so that we are less likely to forget in subsequent meanings, 2) acknowledgement; where we demonstrate the value we place on the interaction by personalizing it and 3)  the connection that comes from simply using the personal label that is a person’s given name.

Almost all educators have experienced the increased effectiveness of redirecting behavior by using a child’s name in the hallway vs. a generic “Hey You.” As long as we realize that this school family is an additional circle, not a replacement for the family circle in which the child lives, we are adding to their support system, not creating a competition for the child’s loyalty and attention.

Our abilities to move between and within the circles we inhabit may be a key to our mental health and sense of self. I relish this new circle of educators that will meet several times a year to plan ways to participate in the conversation that must happen if schools are to be supported in Wisconsin. I am truly grateful to have joined the circle of voices that post on the Marquette Educator site. I am a parent, a child, a teacher, a student, a reader, a writer, a thinker, an activist and a dreamer, all at the same time. I am a lover of polka dots. They make me smile, maybe because they represent these wonderful circles of my life.

Tuesday Trivia – April 2, 2013

Recently, our own COED was ranked among the top-ranked schools in U.S. News & World Report’s latest edition of “Best Graduate Schools.” (Woo-hoo!)

What was our ranking?

Claim your chance to win by leaving the correct answer in the comments section below anytime today between 7am – 6pm. And don’t be afraid to play, even if someone has already posted the right answer! One winner will be randomly selected from ALL correct answers after the close of business and announced the following day.  The winner will be posted on our Facebook page and notified by email.  Please note that you must have a valid email address listed in your comment or WordPress profile to win.

________________________________

How much do YOU know about Marquette University and the College of Education? Test your knowledge every Tuesday during Tuesday Trivia!

Tuesday Trivia – March 26, 2013

Hello, basketball fans! We hope you’re as excited as we are by the Golden Eagles advancement to the Sweet Sixteen! Since we all have a little March Madness, test your sports smarts with this week’s trivia:

What was the final score in Saturday’s victory over Butler?

Claim your chance to win by leaving the correct answer in the comments section below anytime today between 7am – 6pm. And don’t be afraid to play, even if someone has already posted the right answer! One winner will be randomly selected from ALL correct answers after the close of business and announced the following day.  The winner will be posted on our Facebook page and notified by email.  Please note that you must have a valid email address listed in your comment or WordPress profile to win.

________________________________

How much do YOU know about Marquette University and the College of Education? Test your knowledge every Tuesday during Tuesday Trivia!

Why My Husband Makes Me Uncomfortable

Don’t get comfortable

By Claudia Felske – “The more comfortable you get with where you are, the harder it is to change.”

Those were my husband’s words last Saturday morning as we sat, 30 feet up, on a ski lift, my third week ever as a skier, his third week as my ski coach.

“Why do I have to change now?” I asked, deflated.  See, I thought I was in the clear. Over the past three weeks, I had graduated from the bunny hill; I had paid my dues in fits, starts, and falls; I was finally starting to swoosh down the hill with some degree of confidence and control. I figured lesson time was over.

But, he wouldn’t let up: “Point your knee out, little toe edge, keep your torso facing downhill,” he drilled, having me hold my poles out, framing the tree at the bottom of the hill. Torso straight, little toe edge, shoulders forward, knee out.

As I added four more details to my brain, the skills I had previously mastered took the backseat and mother nature humbled me, tumbling my body into a white pile of soggy humiliation.

“Can’t I just stay as good I am?” I asked, now repositioning myself on the ski lift. Impatience and frustration were taking hold as I witnessed what seemed to be the systematic dismantling of my previous progress. My left turns were eroding, my balance was a half-foot behind me. “Why am I changing this now? It’s making me worse,” I lamented.

Newbie me, surrounded by my ski expert
husband and son

“Because you can,“ he said knowingly, as we gazed at the powder-sugared trees. “The more comfortable you get with where you are, the harder it is to change.” I knew that voice. Sixteen years of marriage makes one an expert at the various voices. This one was the patient, knowing and wise one. As much as I didn’t want to hear it, as much as my body was resisting it, I found myself having the bizarre realization that it not only applied to me, but also to a colleague of mine.

And so, I shall now transition from the ski hill to my place of work and visit an issue that has been causing me anxiety and sleeplessness. I shall place said colleague squarely on the metaphorical ski hill and let my husband evaluate her.

“Why do we have to change now?” my colleague asks, dangling her metaphorical skis from the metaphorical chairlift. She has a plethora of protests. We’re interchangeable, she and I: it could be either one of us raising the following objections, she of education, me of skiing. My husband replies to us both:

Us:  I can already do this well my way.

Hubby: You’ll never ski anything but glorified bunny hills this way. I don’t want you to get comfortable with mediocrity.

Us:  I’d rather feel steady and safe than off balance and out of control.

Hubby: You don’t even know what you don’t know. What feels good and comfortable now will severely limit what you can do later.

Us:  I’m happy where I am; Isn’t this good enough?

Hubby:  Do you want to be Alpine Valley blue hill good, or real-world good? Do you want to be able to ski any condition that comes your way or limit yourself to this, right here?

Us: This is really hard!

Hubby: Everything’s hard in the beginning. Everything worth anything, is. But if you want to be better, you’ve got to work through the difficulty.

Us: People will laugh at me

Hubby: Actually, they won’t. They don’t. We all fall; that’s how we grow. If you don’t fall down once  in a while, you’re not pushing your limits.

Tragically, when we describe the metaphorical layer, take the skis off the hill and enter the arena of public education, my colleague is not just a single skier stuck in her rudimentary ways. If she’s a teacher, she’s also dulling the competitive edge of her students and her colleagues. And if she’s in an administrator, the impact of her impasse multiplies, crippling other administrators, the teachers she leads, and in turn, their students. She’s an obstructionist.

The increasingly treacherous terrain of education

The terrain is changing dramatically in education, becoming increasingly treacherous, and insistence on using old techniques and old equipment is self-defeating, irrational, and dangerous.

As far as my ski career goes, I plan to fall, to curse, and to grow. And I hope someday to be swooshing downColorado’s black diamonds, torso straight, little toe edge, shoulders forward, knee out.

To those stuck in beginner mode, I echo my husband’s sage advice: Don’t get comfortable—on the ski slopes, or in the classroom.