Welcome To Esperanza Elementary Blog

I want to give you a special welcome to our Esperanza Elementary blog as we take our journey to found the school of our dreams. I invite you to visit us often and offer any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, questions, comments, etc. you might have.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Growth Consciousness





I have been reading a book The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer that has intrigued me.  The authors share the difference between "goal consciousness" and "growth consciousness" that we might want to keep in mind as we enter the season of New Year's Resolutions. 

Goal Consciousness:
  • Focus on destination
  • Motivates you and others
  • Seasonal
  • Challenges you
  • Stops when goal is reached
Growth Consciousness:
  • Focus on the journey
  • Matures you and others
  • Lifelong
  • Changes you
  • Keeps you growing beyond goal

Sunday, December 30, 2012

That's Not What Ships Are For

 
I love this message...and would love to have it posted somewhere in Esperanza. 
 
Claudio R.M. Costa gave a BYU Devotional speech on November 2, 2010 on this theme.  He said:
 
Years ago...I saw a beautiful painting on the wall [of an Institute building]. It was of a 16th-century ship with the sails tied to the mast, anchored safely in the harbor. At the bottom of the painting was the inscription “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

The phrase was in my native tongue of Portuguese. In that language the verb to be has two translations. One translation is the verb ser, and it means something that is fixed or permanent. The other translation is estar,and it is used to describe something that is transitory. For example, for me to state in Portuguese, “I am the son of Nelson Costa,” I would use the verb ser, because I am his son and I will continue to be his son forever. It is unchangeable.

The verb used in the inscription on the painting was estar, meaning that the ship, although anchored, was in the harbor temporarily—it would not be there forever. As you know, ships are not built to stay in the harbor. Looking at the beautiful painting on the wall of the institute building, I was reminded that ships are meant to navigate the oceans and to experience adventure. I was reminded that it is the same with us.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Biliteracy and Sustained Silent Reading

Because Sustained Silent Reading is part of the Esperanza Literacy Program, the following information was extremely helpful. 

The authors--Karen Beeman and Cheryl Urow--gave some great ideas about sustained silent reading in their book Teaching for Biliteracy. 

"When teachers can dedicate 15 to 30 minutes a day to SSR and couple this with readers' interviews (one-on-one meetings with individual students), they are providing students with an opportunity to practice comprehension in a low-stress environment that encourages reading for the sake of reading."

They suggest the following for a successful SSR program:
  • Establish a regular time for SSR three to five times a week.
  • The first few times SSR is implemented, refer to it as reading for pleasure and explain the following:
         How to choose a book
         How to read quietly and without talking to anyone
         How to ignore interruptions by others in the room
  • For students with little experience reading silently for a sustained time, allow 5 minutes for a session of SSR, so they can be successful from the beginning.
  • As students become more comfortable with the routine of SSR, increase the sessions to between 15 and 30 minutes a day, depending on the age of the students and the time available in the daily schedule. 
The authors also suggest that it is important to develop a system to  monitor the books each student is reading, including the language or languages the texts are in.

IMPORTANT:  "While free book choice is a key element of SSR, teachers developing biliteracy in the United States should require the students to read books in Spanish and English during SSR to ensure that students to not read only English books...Teachers can reinforce this requirement that students read books in both languages...by asking that students sign up for readers' interviews at least twiiring that one interview be about a book in Spanish and one about a book in English."

Teacher modeling is extremely important in SSR.  If the teacher is doing this modeling only with an English text, she is sending the message that English is preferable to Spanish. 

Friday, December 28, 2012

Exercise Can Make Us Smarter

Thanks to Mark Alvarez for sharing this on FB.  This is a good reason to have P.E. and active recesses. 


December 26, 2012, 12:01 am

Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for our brains to function optimally.
The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled "Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo," in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.
Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr. Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.
But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.
Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species' body size in comparison with that of other mammals.
To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors' need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hunts as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it's been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.
But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.
To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in a variety of mammals, including dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongeese, goats, sheep and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.
The researchers also looked at recent experiments in which mice and rats were systematically bred to be marathon runners. Lab animals that willingly put in the most miles on running wheels were interbred, resulting in the creation of a line of lab animals that excelled at running.
Interestingly, after multiple generations, these animals began to develop innately high levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. These substances are important for endurance performance. They also are known to drive brain growth.
What all of this means, says David A. Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona and an author of a new article about the evolution of human brains appearing in the January issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology, is that physical activity may have helped to make early humans smarter.
"We think that what happened" in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, he says, is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.
Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.
And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later.
The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.
And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that "regular exercise, even walking," leads to more robust mental abilities, "beginning in childhood and continuing into old age."
Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.
But it is compelling, says Harvard's Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. "I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind," he says, a relationship that makes the term "jogging your memory" more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.


Thursday, December 27, 2012

More on Reflection





I finished reading the book Teaching for Biliteracy by Karen Beeman and Cheryl Urow.  I felt Chapter 3 reinforced a previous Esperanza BLOG entry on the importance of reflection. 

Chapter 3: Teachers: Capitalizing on Life Experiences and Diversity
  • The cultural and linguistic background of teachers affects their understanding of students and their interpretation on how to instruct in Spanish and English.
  • All teachers of Spanish literacy require specific professional development on how to teach literacy in Spanish in the U.S.
  • Literacy learning is enhanced when teachers are reflective and aware of their own strengths and challenges.
Teachers need to engage in ongoing professional development and collaborate with other teachers. True collaboration requires trust, flexibility, and shared philosophy. To prepare for collaboration teachers need to reflect on their own experiences and professional development.

The more teachers reflect on their practice, the better they teach. Keeping a journal is one effective way for individual teachers to keep a consistent focus on their practice. Journaling can start by asking these three questions:
  1. What went well? Why?
  2. What surprised me? Why?
  3. What do I want to improve? Why?

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Your Brain on Fiction

March 17, 2012

Your Brain on Fiction



AMID the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience.
Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.
Researchers have long known that the “classical” language regions, like Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, are involved in how the brain interprets written words. What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why the experience of reading can feel so alive. Words like “lavender,” “cinnamon” and “soap,” for example, elicit a response not only from the language-processing areas of our brains, but also those devoted to dealing with smells.
In a 2006 study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers in Spain asked participants to read words with strong odor associations, along with neutral words, while their brains were being scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. When subjects looked at the Spanish words for “perfume” and “coffee,” their primary olfactory cortex lit up; when they saw the words that mean “chair” and “key,” this region remained dark. The way the brain handles metaphors has also received extensive study; some scientists have contended that figures of speech like “a rough day” are so familiar that they are treated simply as words and no more. Last month, however, a team of researchers from Emory University reported in Brain & Language that when subjects in their laboratory read a metaphor involving texture, the sensory cortex, responsible for perceiving texture through touch, became active. Metaphors like “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands” roused the sensory cortex, while phrases matched for meaning, like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands,” did not.
Researchers have discovered that words describing motion also stimulate regions of the brain distinct from language-processing areas. In a study led by the cognitive scientist Véronique Boulenger, of the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France, the brains of participants were scanned as they read sentences like “John grasped the object” and “Pablo kicked the ball.” The scans revealed activity in the motor cortex, which coordinates the body’s movements. What’s more, this activity was concentrated in one part of the motor cortex when the movement described was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg.
The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto (and a published novelist), has proposed that reading produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs on minds of readers just as computer simulations run on computers.” Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.
The novel, of course, is an unequaled medium for the exploration of human social and emotional life. And there is evidence that just as the brain responds to depictions of smells and textures and movements as if they were the real thing, so it treats the interactions among fictional characters as something like real-life social encounters.
Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, performed an analysis of 86 fMRI studies, published last year in the Annual Review of Psychology, and concluded that there was substantial overlap in the brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to navigate interactions with other individuals — in particular, interactions in which we’re trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of others. Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map of other people’s intentions “theory of mind.” Narratives offer a unique opportunity to engage this capacity, as we identify with characters’ longings and frustrations, guess at their hidden motives and track their encounters with friends and enemies, neighbors and lovers.
It is an exercise that hones our real-life social skills, another body of research suggests. Dr. Oatley and Dr. Mar, in collaboration with several other scientists, reported in two studies, published in 2006 and 2009, that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. This relationship persisted even after the researchers accounted for the possibility that more empathetic individuals might prefer reading novels. A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind — an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television. (Dr. Mar has conjectured that because children often watch TV alone, but go to the movies with their parents, they may experience more “parent-children conversations about mental states” when it comes to films.)
Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, “is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.”
These findings will affirm the experience of readers who have felt illuminated and instructed by a novel, who have found themselves comparing a plucky young woman to Elizabeth Bennet or a tiresome pedant to Edward Casaubon. Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.
Annie Murphy Paul is the author, most recently, of “Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives.”


Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A Lesson from Thomas Jefferson

I finished reading the book Thomas Jefferson the Art of Power by Jon Meacham.  The author tells a wonderful story about Jefferson that says much about Jefferson's character and from whom all our Esperanza stakeholders can learn. 

Jefferson was insignificant debt, yet he had, as a favor to a friend, cosigned a note for $20,000 for Virginia governor Wilson Cary Nicholas in 1819.  It was the act of a gentleman and kinsman:  a Nicholas daughter had married a Jefferson grandson.

Nicholas was forced to default on the note, leaving the former president responsible for the debt.  On the granddaughter-in-law's first call at Monticello since news of the disaster, Jefferson took care to seek her out.  Abashed and horrified by the news, she was unsure how to conduct herself around Jefferson.  When he emerged from his rooms, he immediately called for her.  "She heard his voice and flew to meet him."  Henry Randall wrote, "Instead of the usual hearty hand-shake and kiss, he folded her in his arms.  His smile was radiant."  At dinner he spoke with her with great grace; the shame the young woman had felt disappeared.  "Neither then nor on any subsequent occasion," wrote Randall, "did he ever by a word or look make her aware that he was even conscious of the misfortune her father had brought upon him."

Governor Nicholas himself lived along the route Jefferson traveled to Poplar Forest, and Jefferson knew he could not fail to call on him.  "I ought not to stop; I have not time; but it would be cruel to pass him."  Jefferson said to a family member as they turned off the road to Nicholas's place.  Meeting his old friend, Jefferson behaved perfectly.  "He showed no depression, and he did not make an equal exposure of his feelings by feigning extraordinary cheerfulness," wrote Randall.  For the rest of Nicholas's life, Jefferson treated him as though nothing had happened.  A busybody lady once spoke meanly of Nicholas in Jefferson's presence at Monticello, and the former president cut her off politely but firmly.  He had, he told her, "the highest opinion of Governor Nicholas, and felt the deepest sympathy for his misfortunes."  Such was the private character of the man whose public eneemies accused him of selfishness, duplicity, inordinate ambition, and cold bloodedness. 

Monday, December 24, 2012

Sunday, December 23, 2012

The Power of Reflection

I recently read the book 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John C. Maxwell.  I am now reading it again--a chapter each week.  This week's chapter is "The Law of Reflection." 

Peter F. Drucker said, "Follow effective action with quiet reflection.  From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action." 

Maxwell notes that studying the lives of great people will reveal that they speak a considerable amount of time alone--thinking/reflecting.  Therefore, I am going to encourage each Esperanza staff person to keep a reflective/growth journal. 

Maxwell suggests that good questions lead to better answers.  Some possible questions:
  • Am I growing daily?
  • What am I doing daily to grow?
  • How am I growing?
  • What are the roadblocks that are keeping me from growing?
  • What were the potential learning moments I experienced today, and did I seize them?
  • Am I passing on to someone what I am learning?
It would be beneficial to write these questions and answers in one's reflective/growth journal.

It's important to schedule time to pause and reflect.  Maxwell suggests the following:
  1. Every day--10-30 minutes
  2. Every week--an hour or two
  3. Several times a year--half a day
  4. Annually--as little as a day or as much as a week
This type of reflection turns experience into insight. 

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Talent

One of Esperanza's 4 foundation pillars is Invitational Education.  Dr. William Purkey, the founder of Invitational Education, said this:

"You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth."

This quote shared by J.B. Fanjul on my Facebook page complements the above quote.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Latin Americans Rank as Happiest People on Planet

Another great lesson we can learn from Latinos! :)

 

Latin Americans rank as happiest people on planet



MEXICO CITY (AP) — The world's happiest people aren't in Qatar, the richest country by most measures. They aren't in Japan, the nation with the highest life expectancy. Canada, with its chart-topping percentage of college graduates, doesn't make the top 10.
A poll released Wednesday of nearly 150,000 people around the world says seven of the world's 10 countries with the most upbeat attitudes are in Latin America.
Many of the seven do poorly in traditional measures of well-being, like Guatemala, a country torn by decades of civil war followed by waves of gang-driven criminality that give it one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Guatemala sits just above Iraq on the United Nations' Human Development Index, a composite of life expectancy, education and per capita income. But it ranks seventh in positive emotions.
"In Guatemala, it's a culture of friendly people who are always smiling," said Luz Castillo, a 30-year-old surfing instructor. "Despite all the problems that we're facing, we're surrounded by natural beauty that lets us get away from it all."
Gallup Inc. asked about 1,000 people in each of 148 countries last year if they were well-rested, had been treated with respect, smiled or laughed a lot, learned or did something interesting and felt feelings of enjoyment the previous day.
In Panama and Paraguay, 85 percent of those polled said yes to all five, putting those countries at the top of the list. They were followed closely by El Salvador, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Guatemala, the Philippines, Ecuador and Costa Rica.
The people least likely to report positive emotions lived in Singapore, the wealthy and orderly city-state that ranks among the most developed in the world. Other wealthy countries also sat surprisingly low on the list. Germany and France tied with the poor African state of Somaliland for 47th place.
Prosperous nations can be deeply unhappy ones. And poverty-stricken ones are often awash in positivity, or at least a close approximation of it.
It's a paradox with serious implications for a relatively new and controversial field called happiness economics that seeks to improve government performance by adding people's perceptions of their satisfaction to traditional metrics such as life expectancy, per capita income and graduation rates.
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan famously measures policies by their impact on a concept called Gross National Happiness.
British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a national well-being program in 2010 as part of a pledge to improve Britons' lives in the wake of the global recession. A household survey sent to 200,000 Britons asks questions like "How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?"
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which unites 34 of the world's most advanced countries, recently created a Better Life Index allowing the public to compare countries based on quality of life in addition to material well-being.
Some experts say that's a dangerous path that could allow governments to use positive public perceptions as an excuse to ignore problems. As an example of the risks, some said, the Gallup poll may have been skewed by a Latin American cultural proclivity to avoid negative statements regardless of how one actually feels.
"My immediate reaction is that this influenced by cultural biases," said Eduardo Lora, who studied the statistical measurement of happiness as the former chief economist of the Inter-American Development Bank
"What the empirical literature says is that some cultures tend to respond to any type of question in a more positive way," said Lora, a native of Colombia, the 11th most-positive country.
For the nine least positive countries, some were not surprising, like Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and Haiti. For others at the bottom, Armenia at the second lowest spot, Georgia and Lithuania, misery is something a little more ephemeral.
"Feeling unhappy is part of the national mentality here," said Agaron Adibekian, a sociologist in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. "Armenians like being mournful; there have been so many upheavals in the nation's history. The Americans keep their smiles on and avoid sharing their problems with others. And the Armenians feel ashamed about being successful."
The United States was No. 33 in positive outlook. Latin America's biggest economies, Mexico and Brazil, sat more than 20 places further down the list.
Jon Clifton, a partner at Gallup, acknowledged the poll partly measured cultures' overall tendency to express emotions, positive or negative. But he said skeptics shouldn't undervalue the expression of positive emotion as an important phenomenon in and of itself.
"Those expressions are a reality, and that's exactly what we're trying to quantify," he said. "I think there is higher positive emotionality in these countries."
Some Latin Americans said the poll hit something fundamental about their countries: a habit of focusing on posivites such as friends, family and religion despite daily lives that can be grindingly difficult.
Carlos Martinez sat around a table with 11 fellow construction workers in a Panama City restaurant sharing a breakfast of corn empanadas, fried chicken and coffee before heading to work on one of the hundreds of new buildings that have sprouted during a yearslong economic boom driven in large part by the success of the Panama Canal. The boom has sent unemployment plunging, but also increased traffic and crime.
Martinez pronounced himself unhappy with rising crime but "happy about my family."
"Overall, I'm happy because this is a country with many natural resources, a country that plays an important role in the world," he said. "We're Caribbean people, we're people who like to celebrate, to eat well and live as well as we can. There are a lot of possibilities here, you just have to sacrifice a little more."
Singapore sits 32 places higher than Panama on the Human Development Index, but at the opposite end of the happiness list. And things weren't looking good Wednesday to Richard Low, a 33-year-old businessman in the prosperous Asian metropolis.
"We work like dogs and get paid peanuts. There's hardly any time for holidays or just to relax in general because you're always thinking ahead: when the next deadline or meeting is. There is hardly a fair sense of work-life balance here," he said.
In Paraguay, tied with Panama as the most-positive country while doing far worse than Panama by objective measures, street vendor Maria Solis said tough economic conditions were no reason to despair.
"Life is short and there are no reasons to be sad because even if we were rich, there would still be problems," she said while selling herbs used for making tea. "We have to laugh at ourselves."
___
Source: Gallup Inc., http://www.gallup.com/poll/159254/latin-americans-positive-world.aspx
___
Associated Press writers Romina Ruiz-Goiriena in Guatemala City; Juan Zamarano in Panama City; Sylvia Hui in London; Angela Charlton in Paris; Heather Tan in Singapore; Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia; and Pedro Servin in Asuncion, Paraguay, contributed to this report.
___
Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mweissenstein

Thursday, December 20, 2012

The Tyranny of Homework

Accessed from http://newsroom.opencolleges.edu.au/features/the-tyranny-of-homework-20-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-assign-homework-over-the-holidays/  if you want to access the info mentioned in the article. 

The Tyranny of Homework: 20 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Assign Homework Over The Holidays

Kid with homework
Many students agree that homework over the holidays really is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
Upon returning from winter break, you’ll probably have a handful of students saying the dog ate their homework or it got blown away in a winter storm. But you’ll probably be surprised to learn that some research suggests too much homework can be a bad thing. A 2009 article in the Los Angeles Times, suggests that some districts have cut back on the amount of homework in the effort to consider children’s social development. In fact, the San Ramon Valley district modified its homework policy and no homework is allowed over weekends and holiday vacations, except for reading.
The US National Education Association recommends no more than ten minutes (of homework) per grade level, per night.
Homework has fallen in and out of favor over the decades. California even established a law in 1901 limiting the amount of homework teachers could assign. Homework is highly in favor now a days. With recent trends of information overload, packed activity schedules, and childhood obesity, it’s no wonder educators are reconsidering their stance on homework.
Here are 20 reasons why you shouldn’t assign homework over the holidays. Perhaps one of your students will print this list and encourage you to reconsider your ideas about homework.
  1. Students are learning all the time in the 21st century. According to a recent article in MindShift traditional homework will become obsolete in the next decade. Thanks to computers, learning is occurring 24/7. With access to software programs, worldwide connections, and learning websites such as the Khan Academy, learning occurs all the time. According to Mindshift, “the next decade is going to see the traditional temporal boundaries between home and school disappear.” Try to see if you can bridge the gap between school and home by getting students interested in doing their own research over holiday break. Rather than assigning homework, create a true interest in learning. They will often pursue learning about topics they like on their own. After all, this is the way of the 21st century and information is everywhere.
  2. More homework doesn’t necessarily equate to higher achievement. Yes, too much homework can actually be a bad thing. A 1989 Duke University study that reviewed 120 studies found a weak link between achievement and homework at the elementary level and only a moderate benefit at the middle school level. In a similar recent review of 60 studies, researchers at Duke U found homework was beneficial, but assigning excessive amounts of homework was counterproductive. The research found homework was more beneficial for older students than younger ones. The study was completed by Harris Cooper, a leading homework research and author of “The Battle over Homework: Common Ground for Administrators, Teachers, and Parents”. Cooper suggests that teachers at the younger level may assign homework for improving study skills, rather than learning, explaining why many studies concluded less benefit for younger children. Many teachers do not receive specific training on homework. Cooper suggests that homework should be uncomplicated and short, involve families, and engage student interests.
  3. Countries that assign more homework don’t outperform those with less homework. Around the world, countries that assign more homework don’t see to perform any better. A Stanford study found that in counties like Japan, Denmark, and the Czech Republic little homework was assigned and students outperformed students in counties with large amounts of homework such as Greece, Thailand, and Iran. American and British students seem to have more homework than most counties, and still only score in the international average. In fact, Japan has instituted no homework policies at younger levels to allow family time and personal interests. Finland, a national leader in international tests, limits high school homework to half hour per night. Of course, there are other factors not taken into account in the study, such as length of the school day. But in itself, it is interesting to see this issue from a world perspective.
  4. Instead of assigning homework, suggest they read for fun. There are great holiday stories and books you can recommend to parents and students. If you approach the activity with a holiday spirit, many students will be engaged. They may want to check out the stories on their own. You can start by reading the first chapter in class and leaving them intrigued. For instance, you can read the first chapter of TheGift of the Magi and suggest students read it over winter break. With younger students, you might promise roles in a play for students who read over break.
  5. Don’t assign holiday busy work. Most academics agree that busy work does little to increase learning. It is best to not assign packets of worksheets if they do nothing to add to student learning. You also don’t want to waste valuable time grading meaningless paperwork. Some studies show that much homework may actually decline achievement. Assigning excessive amounts of homework may be detrimental. In fact, a 2006 study by Yankelovick found that reading achievement declined when students were assigned too much homework. Actually, interesting reading such as Harry Potter produced higher reading achievement.
  6. Have students attend a local cultural event. You can let parents know that instead of assigning homework, you are suggesting students attend a particular event that relates to your classroom. For instance, if you are reading Shakespeare, they might attend a related play or ballet.
  7. Family time is more important during the holidays. Assigning less homework makes it easier for families to have time together. Family studies at the University of Michigan, show that family time is extremely important to achievement and behavior. Studies on family meals, suggest that students who have dinner with their family have better academic scores and behavioral outcomes. Perhaps this is only a correlation, but family time is undeniably important to child development. Students spent most of their days at school while parents are at work. When all is said and done, remember what it was like being a kid. The things you remember most about the holidays aren’t the assignments you took home, but the time you spend with family and friends.
  8. For students who travel during the holidays, homework may impede learning on their trip. The Holiday time is the one time of year that many families reconnect with distant family members or travel. I remember having to pack hoards of books over some holidays to Spain and it was not fun. I wanted to enjoy the time with family and experience the country fully. Traveling in itself is a learning activity. Let students experience their travels fully.
  9. Kids need time to be kids. A recent article from Australia’s Happy Child website, “What is the value of Homework: Research and Reality” considers this issue and explains how children need unstructured play time. Homework can have a negative influence on early learning experiences. Suggest students use holiday time to do physical activity, such as ice-skating or sledding. Many kids don’t get enough exercise. Childhood obesity is a major problem in the United States. Suggesting students play outside or participate in a sport is a good way to get them to value physical activity. The holidays are a great time for kids to go sledding in the snow or play with friends outside. If no one has homework, classmates might exchange phone numbers to play together. You can suggest this to parents. If the teacher thinks physical activity is important, students will too.
  10. Some education experts recommend an end to all homework. Etta Kralovec and John Buell, authors of The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning, controversially suggests that homework may be a form of intrusion on family life, and may increase the drop-out rate in high schools. The authors blame homework for increasing the achievement gap due to socio-economic differences in after-school obligations. Consider challenging your own views of the benefits of homework and try to create a level playing field when considering assignments.
  11. Send a letter to parents explaining why you are not assigning work. You might want to take the Christmas holiday as a chance to engage parents to play a learning game or do some art with their kids. If families know there is an intentional purpose to not assigning work, they may take the chance to spend more one-on-one time with their child.
  12. You can make the holidays a time for an “open project” for extra credit. Students might take this time to do something related to the curriculum that they would like to explore on their own terms. Before the holidays, you might talk about topics or provide books students for students to take home. Learning for fun and interest, might produce more meaningful engagement than assigned homework.
  13. Suggest they visit a museum instead. With families at home, the holiday time is a great time for students to see an exhibit that interests them or do a fun activity at a nearby museum. Sometimes encouraging these field trips may be more beneficial than assigning homework. You might want to print coupons, a schedule, or a list of upcoming exhibits so that families have the information at their fingertips.
  14. Encourage students to volunteer during the holiday time. The holidays are a great time for students to give back. Students might volunteer at a local soup kitchen or pantry. Volunteer organizations are often at their busiest during the holiday time. Plus, students learn a lot from the experience of doing community service. I remember visiting a group home during the holiday time in high school and helping kids wrap Christmas gifts for their families. This is a great alternative to assigning homework, especially for Generation Y who highly values civic involvement.
  15. Develop a class game. You might have the class play a learning game the week before vacation and have them take it home to show their family. My fourth grade teacher had hop-scotch math. We often drew with chalk outside to replicate her game at home. Try to think of a holiday-themed game or one that the whole family can get involved in.
  16. Students might learn more from observing the real world. Learning isn’t just about paper and pencil activities. Teachers should also inspire students to seek ways to learn from real-world experiences. They might cook with their parents and practice measuring. Or tag along with a parent who is putting up holiday lights or building a shed. Ask students to observe a job around the house or ask their parents about their job over holiday break. They might be enlightened to learn more about the real world and different jobs they might pursue in the future. Perhaps some students might be able to go to work with their parents instead of a formal assignment.
  17. Go on a hike. Students learn a great deal from nature. Tell students to go outside on a walk and be ready to share their experience when they get back. Did they observe natural phenomena you talked about in science class or different types of rocks you discussed in geology? Or can you tie their walk into a discussion of poetry?
  18. Tell students to visit an amusement park. If you are teaching physics or math, amusement parks give ample room to explain the laws of physics and mathematical probability. This outing would allow students to think about the real world implications of science. You may want to even plan a lesson beforehand that ties this idea in. On another level, it allows students to create a lasting memory with their own families.
  19. Kids need rest! Everyone needs a mental breather and the holidays are the best time for students to play and take a break from school. Kids need a full ten hours of sleep and adequate rest. The vacation time is a great time for students to take a mental breather from school. With many family outings and vacations during the holiday time, they will have less time to complete homework. They will come back to school feeling re-energized.
  20. Many parents and students dislike holiday homework. You want parents to buy-in to your classroom community and support your endeavors with students. Assigning holiday homework is usually unpopular with parents because it may the one time of year they have to give children their undivided attention. Instead, you might want to take a survey to see if parents agree with the idea. You can then send a letter with the survey results. Taking parents’ perspectives into account shows you value their opinions and feedback. Students prefer some free time too. Not surprisingly one student created a Facebook page, titled, “Why do teachers give us homework over the holiday.” If the students know you are giving them a break over the holidays they may work harder for you when they get back.
If you’re still not convinced, check out this fact sheet based on The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It by Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish. If you are still going to assign some holiday homework, at least keep in mind some guidelines.
The US National Education Association recommends no more than ten minutes per grade level, per night. If you must assign homework make sure it is meaningful and doesn’t take away from time with families. And most of all, remember what it was like being a kid during the holiday time. Homework is generally not a part of those memories, nor should it be. Those days playing outside and spending time with family are lifelong memories just as important as school.
Childhood is over in the blink of an eye.

About

Miriam Clifford holds a Masters in Teaching from City University and a Bachelor in Science from Cornell. She loves research and is passionate about education. She is a foodie and on her time off enjoys cooking and gardening. You can find her @miriamoclifford or Google+.




Read more: http://newsroom.opencolleges.edu.au/features/the-tyranny-of-homework-20-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-assign-homework-over-the-holidays/#ixzz2Fb1PZ4qv

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Influence of Art

This is why we want beautiful art everywhere in Esperanza. 


The Influence of Art
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell
Beautiful art is good for the soul. It can lift and inspire; it can calm and soothe; it can inform and enlighten. Art improves our quality of life and has been shown to stimulate brain function, reduce stress, and help us focus on things that really matter.1Those who take time to appreciate art—in its many forms—understand its remarkable effects.

Years ago, a man purchased his first home and, with his limited budget, set to the task of furnishing it. But rather than buying a sofa, a nice kitchen table, or other pieces of furniture, he first bought some modest but inspiring artwork. He knew he would eventually need a place to sit in his new home, but he felt he neededart on his walls even more.
When friends and family came to visit, they admired the beautiful prints and paintings that adorned his walls, but they wondered why he did not have much in the way of furniture. He explained that he was working on saving enough money to buy better furniture, but he was afraid that if he did not place a priority on art, he might never be able to justify its purchase.

John Hafen, a noted artist from a hundred years ago, explained what this man seemed to know about art. He said: "The influence of art is so powerful in shaping our lives for a higher
appreciation of the creations of our God that we cannot afford to neglect an acquaintance with it. We should be as eager for its companionship . . . as we are eager for chairs to sit upon or for food to sustain our lives, for it has as important a mission in shaping our character and in conducing to our happiness as anything that we term necessities. Life is incomplete without it.”2

Indeed, art makes life more meaningful. Whether a painting or a poem, a sculpture or a song, wholesome artistic expression lifts us from the everyday and helps us see beyond the here and now.


1. See "31 Ways to Get Smarter in 2012,” Newsweek, Dec. 30, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/30/31-ways-to-get-smarter-in-2012.item-22.html.

2. In Thomas A. Leek, "A Circumspection of Ten Formulators of Early Utah Art History” [master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1961], 39.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Effective Schools Checklist

Effective Schools Checklist


Don’t blame the parents. Don’t blame the kids. Don’t blame the neighborhood.
If we want effective schools let’s look at the schools.
Ron Edmonds of Harvard who put the term “Effective Schools” on the map with his speech “Some Schools Work and more Can” in 1978 said
We can whenever, and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need, in order to do this. Whether we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.”
It’s a scandal! Nearly 30 years later most school people don’t have an inkling about these findings, or if they do are more prone to debate or ignore the research than implement it.
Of course, this is typical because there is little up-take within a system when there is no motivation to improve (or worse still, a feeling that improvements aren’t necessary – the problems will go away).
What we need is to open up the discussions – let parents in on the scene to ensure effective schools. You can be sure, parents won’t let the matter die or gather dust for another 30 years! Resolve, commitment, the will to do things comes when there is a “dynamic” going on – when parents and educators CARE together.
We can’t let another two generations of school children slip through. This checklist is from the 1983 archives of Education Advisory, a consumer service for parents in the 70′ & 80′s.
EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS CHECKLIST(from the original work of Ron Edmonds, Harvard, 1978)
___ 1. Instructional Leadership Principal is an effective communicator (with staff, parents, students, school boards), an effective supervisor, & the instructional leader in the school
___ 2. Focused School Mission General consensus by the school community (staff, parents, students ) on goals, priorities, assessment, accountability. The mission statement is specified and reviewed periodically.
___ 3. Orderly Environment Purposeful atmosphere, not oppressive, and is conducive to teaching and learning.
___ 4.High Expectations Demonstrated high expectations not only for all students but for staff as well. The belief is that students are capable and able to achieve, that teachers are capable and not powerless to make a difference.
___ 5. Mastery of Basic Skills In particular, basic reading, writing and math skills are emphasized with back-up alternatives available for students with special learning needs.
___ 6. Frequent Monitoring of Results Means exist to monitor student progress in relationship to instructional objectives (and results can be easily conveyed to parents).
___ Means to monitor teacher effectiveness
___ A system of monitoring school goals
___ 7. Meaningful Parent Involvement Parents are kept well-informed re: programs, goals, etc. There is ample opportunity for them to keep in touch with their child’s progress. They are consulted for feedback about the school and when changes are foreseen Parent-initiated contact with the school is encouraged.
___* 8. Avoidance of Pitfalls Up-to-date awareness of good educational practice plus retaining currency in the field concerning promising and discredited practices.

*Most “effective schools studies” repeat the first 7 points. But, Edmonds’ original work stressed “one of the cardinal characteristics of effective schools is that they are as anxious to avoid things that don’t work as they are committed to implement things that do.”

http://education-advisory.org/2007/08/effective-schools-checklist/

Monday, December 17, 2012

¿Dónde Está Santa Claus? lyrics

I posted the music for this song on our Esperanza FB page a couple of days ago.  Felt it would be fun to have the lyrics, too.  This would be a great song to teach our Esperanza scholars. 


Augio Rios:  ¿Dónde está Santa Claus?



Mamacita, dónde está Santa Claus
Dónde está Santa Claus
And the toys that he will leave

Mamacita
Oh, where is Santa Claus
I look for him because
It's Christmas Eve

I know that I should be sleeping
But maybe he's not far away
So out of the window I'm peeping
Hoping to see him in his sleigh

I hope he won't forget
To crack his castinets
And to his reindeer, say

Oh, Pancho, oh, Vixen
Oh, Pedro, oh, Blitzen
Ole (ole) ole (ole)
Ole (cha cha cha)

Mamacita, dónde está Santa Claus
Oh, where is Santa Claus
It's Christmas Eve

I know that I should be sleeping
But maybe he's not far away
So out of the window I'm peeping
Hoping to see him in his sleigh

I hope he won't forget
To crack his castinets
And to his reindeer, say

Oh, Pancho, oh, Vixen
Oh, Pedro, oh, Blitzen
Ole (ole) ole (ole)
Ole (cha cha cha)

Mamacita, dónde está Santa Claus
Oh, where is Santa Claus
It's Christmas Eve

Oh, where is Santa Claus
It's Christmas Eve

All right, Mamacita
I go sleep now

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Clear Communication


A FB friend--Flor Olivo--shared this today.  It is a reminder that we need to be clear in our communication.  :)

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Making Esperanza Safe

In the midst of this tragedy in Connecticut, I am reminded of the importance of making Esperanza as safe as we can.  The following thoughts from an article  http://www.newser.com/article/da363ado0/experts-talk-with-kids-about-conn-shooting-make-them-feel-safe-limit-exposure-to-media.html  are some important reminders. 




As students head back to their classrooms on Monday, parents and children should know that school shootings are rare and schools still are among the safest places, said William Lassiter of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence. He said parents can ask their principal or parent-teacher group for a copy of their school crisis plan.
Notice whether schools stick to their own security plans, he said. Do people have to check in at the door and sign in at the front office, for example?

"A lot of times, the parents are the ones who need to remind the school," he said.
Schools should have an emergency plan that is available to parents that explains what the school will do in various emergencies, such as a fire, hazardous materials spill, lockdown or evacuation. It should also say how the school will communicate with the parents: for example on its Twitter feed, Facebook page, website, or by email or automated phone call, said Kitty Porterfield, a spokeswoman for the American Association of School Administrators.

From the moment a child starts school, they are learning safety procedures such as lining up and following the teacher, she said. School districts in most major metropolitan areas also hold drills in which teachers and administrators practice what to do in a shooting or similar emergency. Most don't involve children so that they aren't upset, but some do, she said.

Friday, December 14, 2012

The Fiction vs. Non-fiction Debate

From Stephen Krashen
 
The fiction vs. non-fiction debate.
Submitted to the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 13, 2012
E.D. Hirsch is right when he asserts that we acquire vocabulary through reading (“Vocabulary declines, with unspeakable results,” Dec. 12). He is right when he states that background knowledge helps us understand what we read and thereby stimulates vocabulary development. But his insistence that this reading must be non-fiction is not supported by empirical research.
Study after study shows that self-selected reading, or “free voluntary reading,” results in profound development not only of vocabulary, but also of writing style, grammar, and spelling. It also results in knowledge of a wide variety of subjects. This provides the foundation for making academic texts more comprehensible.
Free voluntary reading often includes non-fiction, but for most people, a great deal of it is fiction.
...
If we are in fact suffering from a vocabulary gap, the solution is better access to a wide range of reading material: more support for libraries, especially for children of poverty, who typically have little access to books at home, at school, and in their communities.
Stephen Krashen
Some sources
Self-selected reading and vocabulary, grammar, spelling, writing style:
McQuillan, J. 1998. The literacy crisis: False claims and real solutions. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Heineman and Libraries Unlimited.
Krashen, S 2011. Free Voluntary Reading. Libraries Unlimited.
Lee, S. Y. 2005. Facilitating and inhibiting factors on EFL writing: A model testing with SEM. Language Learning 55 (2), 335-374.

Reading and knowledge:
e.g. Stanovich, K., West, R., and Harrison, M. 1995. Knowledge growth and maintenance across the life span: The role of print exposure. Developmental Psychology 31 (5): 811- 826.

Libraries and literacy development:
Krashen, S., Lee, SY., and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is the library important? Multivariate studies at the national and international level. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 8(1)? 26-36.
Lance, K. C. The Impact of School Libraries on Student Achievement.
http://www.lrs.org/impact.php

Poverty and access to books:
Allington, R., S. Guice, K. Baker, N. Michaelson, and S. Li. 1995. Access to
books: Variations in schools and classrooms. The Language and Literacy Spectrum 5: 23-25.
Neuman, S., and D. Celano. 2001. Access to print in low-income and middle
income communities. Reading Research Quarterly 36(1): 8-26.
Original article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444165804578010394278688454.html?mod=djemITP_h
Vocabulary Declines, With Unspeakable Results

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Aligned Curriculum

At our 2nd ACES (Aspiring Charter Executive Seminar) last night we learned about aligned curriculum and student achievement. 

One thing we discussed was instructional alignment.  S. A. Cohen argues that "the lack of excellence in american schools is not caused by ineffective teaching, but mostly by misaligning what teachers teach, what they intend to teach, and what they assess as having been taught."

K. T. Wishnick, another researcher, found that alignment accounted for more than 36% of the variance in performance on norm-referenced standardized tests.  Altogether, the remaining variables--gender, SES (socioeconomic status), and teacher effect--accounted for little of the variance in student scores.  Moreover, the alignment effect was more powerful for low achievers than for high achievers. 

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Suspensions

Food for thought about why we want to avoid suspensions at Esperanza. 

 

From:  http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/05/does-suspending-students-work/

 

Education


Does Suspending Students Work?


By Christopher J. Ferguson Dec. 05, 2012


Every now and again we hear stories about a kid getting suspended from school for some absurdly minor infraction. In October, four teenage boys in Pekin, Illinois, were suspended for two days for eating energy mints in the cafeteria. Last year, there was a rash of suspensions of students for hugging, and examples of cases involving dress codes such as haircuts or t-shirts are too many to list. Although the misdeeds are very small, the incidents raise a bigger issue: does suspending a kid from school work? In other words, does it actually ameliorate behavioral and academic problems?

Increasingly, the answer seems to be no. In fact, suspensions may do more harm than good. As Pamela Fenning and her colleagues noted in the April 2012 Journal of School Violence, most school districts continue to use out-of-school suspensions even for minor disciplinary issues even though they tend to actually exacerbate problem behaviors and also may lead to academic problems. Further, out-of-school suspensions are not fairly applied with minority youth being assigned punitive suspensions at greater rates than non-minority youth according to a 2012 report by the US Department of Education.


Reasons why out-of-school suspensions don't work are fairly obvious. Giving students what amounts to a free day or two off doesn't actually feel like punishment for most kids, especially those who may already be hostile towards school to begin with. But if the student then misses school work, his or her grades will decline, further increasing the student's detachment from the academic environment. Out-of-school suspensions leave kids at home unsupervised and able to cause more problems. And they also do nothing to teach appropriate alternative behavior nor address underlying issues that may be causing the bad behavior.

In fairness, schools often struggle to find alternatives for kids whose discipline problems are truly serious and who may disrupt the learning environment for other students. I've worked clinically with enough kids to understand that, although they are a tiny minority, some can be so disruptive that the interventions teachers have at hand will have little impact. Unfortunately, we don't yet have any empirically-validated alternatives. Some schools have implemented either in-school suspension or Saturday suspension (effectively a Saturday detention) so that students are not rewarded by being excused from school and won't miss out on schoolwork.




Ferguson is associate professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University. The views expressed are solely his own.







Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Lessons in Leadership

From www.inc.com

 

Lessons in Leadership: How Lincoln Became America's Greatest President

It wasn't Abraham Lincoln's strengths but the self-discipline with which he used those strengths for the right purpose.



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There is much we can learn by studying Abraham Lincoln's journey from being just another politician to becoming America's greatest president. (Wikipedia provides a compilation of "Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States" which makes it clear that in the eyes of many experts, and the public, Lincoln has consistently held this status). A key to this transformation was how Lincoln, whose birthday is today, developed the self-discipline to take one of his signature strengths—his mastery of language—and used it to serve the interests of the American people rather than his own.
One of the best communicators of all time
Lincoln was undoubtedly one of the greatest communicators among all American presidents. His words—as a public speaker, writer, debater, humorist, and conversationalist—continue to entertain, educate, and inspire us to this day. With only one year of formal schooling, Lincoln consciously cultivated this mastery of language and expression. As a young boy he would practice public speaking by gathering his friends together and stepping onto a stump to address them. During his days as a lawyer in Illinois, Lincoln would frequently meet up in the evening with friends at a tavern where they would engage in story-telling contests. And he gleaned valuable lessons in rhetoric by diligently studying Shakespeare.
As he began forging his political ambitions, Lincoln recognized the power of words to weaken and even destroy his opponents, and so he started to attack them with powerful volleys of criticism and mockery. Upon provocation at a political gathering in 1840, Lincoln mimicked and ridiculed his opponent, Jess Thomas, to uproarious cheering of the crowd. Thomas, who was present at the event, was reduced to tears, and for years afterwards, the people referred to it as "the skinning of Thomas."
Lincoln was also in the habit of writing anonymous letters to newspapers to sharply criticize his adversaries. On one occasion in 1842, for instance, he used the fictitious identity of "Rebecca" to castigate and deride the state auditor, James Shields, calling him "a fool and a liar" in a letter, and making mock-allegations of an unflattering conversation that James had had with Rebecca.
How Lincoln began to use words for a higher purpose
But the Lincoln we know as president was not this brash, impulsive politician who launched personal attacks on his opponents. What made him change? All along, something had been stirring within him. Right after the "skinning of Thomas" in 1840, one of his friends reported that "…the recollection of his own conduct that evening filled [Lincoln] with the deepest chagrin. He felt he had gone too far and to rid his good nature of a load, hunted up Thomas and made ample apology," according to an excerpt in Benjamin Thomas, Lincoln's Humor: An Analysis.
This inner stirring intensified when some of his verbal attacks drew unfavorable consequences for Lincoln himself. In fact, when the letter he signed as "Rebecca" was published, the recipient of his reproach, Shields, was so enraged that he forced the newspaper to divulge the writer's identity, and, when he was told that it was Lincoln, accosted Lincoln and challenged him to a duel. Good sense prevailed on both men just moments before they were to commence this fight-unto-death. Having learned a lesson by coming so close to an inglorious death, Lincoln never wrote such anonymous letters again.
Gradually molding his character this way, Lincoln also became highly attuned to the feelings of others, including his enemies, and highly measured in the way he communicated in adversarial situations. This was a crucial quality for leading America at a time when the nation was so divided, and the wounds of a Civil War had to be rapidly healed. Once, as he and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln were approaching Washington in a carriage, she remarked, "This city is full of enemies," Lincoln injected, "Enemies? Never again must we repeat that word," as told in Lincoln As I Knew Him: Gossip, Tributes, and Revelations from His Best Friends and Worst Enemies.
On an earlier occasion Lincoln had explained about Southerners: "They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up," as recorded in Lincoln-Douglas Debates. And, in a stirring testimony to his power over words, the President pleaded, in his first inaugural address, "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection."
Lincoln had not lost his propensity for ridicule, but now it was mostly directed at his own self, in a self-effacing manner. When, during one of their debates, Stephen Douglas called Lincoln two-faced, Lincoln responded, wryly, "I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, why would I be wearing this one?" (This is from Presidential Anecdotes.)
How Lincoln masterfully handled criticism
Lincoln by now was also showing remarkable self-mastery in gracefully fending off the frequent attacks hurled on him by critics, even those within his inner circle. On one occasion, he was informed that the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, had refused to execute a presidential order—and further, had called the president a "damn fool." "He called me a damn fool?" Lincoln asked. "Yes! Not once, sir, but twice!" replied the excited congressman, who had brought him this news. "Well, Stanton speaks what is on his mind, and he is usually right about what he speaks, so if he called me a damn fool, I must be a damn fool. I will go to him now and find out why," according to a 2005 Time magazine article The Master of the Game.
But changing oneself isn't easy, so even as president, Lincoln's anger occasionally consumed him, making him pour it out in letters to critics, errant generals, and others. He had the self-discipline though to not dispatch these "hot" letters; they were later discovered, unsigned, in a drawer in the president's desk. In this way, one small step at a time, Lincoln built his self-discipline, and through it, the character of his presidency.
Lincoln's journey suggests that the true measure of a leader lies not in how much we cultivate and exploit our strengths, but in how we work on tapping, in Lincoln's words, the "better angels of our nature" to use our strengths in the service of a cause much higher than our own personal gain.
Do you have the discipline to sculpt your character?
Do you view yourself solely as who you are today—some good, some bad—or do you see the potential for gradually sculpting your character further, the way Lincoln did?
How aware are you of your strengths? What have you been doing to nurture them? Are there times when you have misused these strengths? Has this led to any inner stirring in you, and have you been striving to discipline yourself to use your strengths in more and more purposeful ways? What kind of life story could you craft for yourself if you chose to do that?
In the comments section below, I invite you to share reflections from your own journey in life and leadership. Some executives and MBA students in my Personal Leadership & Success classes and workshops have shared remarkable stories of their own personal transformation and growth—in wisdom, character, and life direction. If you have experienced a similar turning point, do describe it below, for your story may inspire us just as much as Lincoln's.