It has been sometime since I visited myself... Lots of water has flown under the bridges... 

Life has been, many times over, compared to a roller coaster ride; it has its ups and downs. We experience happy moments and we relish those moments. We experience disappointments and then we wallow in negativity. Unfortunately, we tend to experience more of life’s downward spiral than the glorious highs; and oftentimes, we get stuck.

When things were not ideally what I want them to be, I easily slipped into the blame game and blamed everything and everyone else–but myself. There was a point in my life that

I became a very negative person. I complained a lot and naively believe that I wasn’t at fault. I was stuck in a vicious cycle of negativity and of feeling hopeless.

One day, I realized that if I were truly to become a better person, I needed to get to the real root of the problem: me. What I needed to see was that everything that happens to me was largely a result of my choices.

In today’s podcast episode, I tackled a question by one member of our get busy living community about the obstacles I faced when I was stuck. I do feel that it is fitting that we address the question as we each have our own episodes of feeling stuck and wasting away.

Learn:

• The obstacles that prevent us from being the person we always want to be.
• Take responsibility of your choices and your life.
• Adopt habits that will set yourself up for success.
• Expand your horizon by opening up to possibilities.
• The importance of consistency in experiencing meaningful and lasting change.

5 Characteristics of an Effective School Team

I've been thinking a lot about what makes a good team in a school context. I'll share some of these thoughts, but I really want to hear your ideas on this subject.

I'm going to admit that it's taken me a while to feel convinced by the power of teams. Until recently, I didn't have great experiences in teams. I felt that alone I could produce whatever needed to be created better, and quicker, than working with others. I often felt frustrated working in teams -- the process felt so slow and cumbersome. I felt like I was usually given (or took) the bulk of the work. I didn't really know what an effective team looked like, how one worked together, or what the benefits could be.

In the last few years, however, my experience in a couple different teams shifted these beliefs. Now, I'm compelled to figure out how to create and develop good teams -- and to identify the specific moves that a coach or facilitator makes in this process. I want to figure out how to grow powerful teams that can transform schools.

Why Does this Matter?

Here's why I think we need to articulate our beliefs and practices about good teams:

Strong teams within a school are essential to retaining and sustaining teachers. In schools with low staff turnover , teachers report feeling connected to colleagues and supported by them. They also describe feeling that they belong to a team whose members are fulfilling a mission together. The emotions activated in this context are those which keep us engaged in a difficult endeavor for a long time. Public education is a hard place to be these days -- we need structures (such as strong teams) that cultivate our emotional resilience.

If a team is effective, then people learn from each other. They accomplish far more than would be possible alone. They inspire and challenge each other. An individual's strengths can be exploited, and we don't have to do the stuff we're not so good at. Again, this is an efficient approach to undertaking a huge project (transforming a school, for example), and it feels good.

What Makes a Good Team?

Here are some key characteristics that I believe make a good team:

1. A good team knows why it exists.

It's not enough to say, "We're the 6th grade team of teachers" -- that's simply what defines you (you teach the same grade), not why you exist. A purpose for being is a team might be: "We come together as a team to support each other, learn from each other, and identify ways that we can better meet the needs of our sixth grade students." Call it a purpose or a mission -- it doesn't really matter. What matters is that those who attend never feel like they're just obligated to attend "another meeting." The purpose is relevant, meaningful, and clear.

2. A good team creates a space for learning.

There are many reasons why those of us working in schools might gather in a team -- but I believe that all of those reasons should contain opportunities for learning with and from each other. I have met very few educators who don't want to learn -- we're a curious bunch and there's so much to learn about education. So in an effective team, learning happens within a safe context. We can make mistakes, take risks, and ask every single question we want.

3. In a good team, there's healthy conflict.

This is inevitable and essential if we're learning together and embarked on some kind of project together. We disagree about ideas, there's constructive dialogue and dissent, and our thinking is pushed.

4. Members of a good team trust each other.

This means that when there's the inevitable conflict, it's managed. People know each other. We listen to each other. There are agreements about how we treat each other and engage with each other, and we monitor these agreements. There's also someone such as a facilitator who ensures that this is a safe space. Furthermore, in order for there to be trust, within a strong team we see equitable participation among members and shared decision-making. We don't see a replication of the inequitable patterns and structures of our larger society (such as male dominance of discourse and so on).

5. A good team has a facilitator, leader, or shared leaders.

There's someone -- or a rotation of people -- who steer the ship. This ensures that there's the kind of intentionality, planning, and facilitation in the moment that's essential for a team to be high functioning.

What Next?

This last point is what I've been contemplating for this fall: What does a good team leader do? How exactly does she facilitate? How can leadership rotate or be shared?

I currently work with a fantastic team of instructional coaches, and we're thinking about this together. I'm so grateful for this team! We're developing a facilitation rubric for coaches -- a tool that identifies and articulates the precise moves we make in order to develop a team that feels purposeful and safe for learning, and that leads to improved outcomes and experiences for the students we serve. We're hoping that this tool will be helpful in our own practice and that it could be useful to others.

In my next post, I'll share some of our ideas about the facilitation moves we make. In the meantime, please share in the comments section below your stories of working in effective teams and your thoughts about what makes a good team.

A New Definition of Rigor

You would think that it would be more prevalent than it is. But it appears only four times in the Common Core State Standards. Why has a word that is mentioned so little caused such dread, anxiety, and confusion among teachers?

I'm talking about rigor.

When We Say Rigor, What Do We Mean?

Comb through all 66 pages of the ELA standards, and you will find it hiding amid larger conversations about analyzing author's choice, evaluating sources, and writing arguments. Look in the math standards, and you will not find it at all.

Yet rigor is all the buzz:

• "Our lesson must be more rigorous."
• "We must increase the rigor of our assessments."
• "Does this book possess the necessary rigor for that grade level?"

These are all things that I have heard at conferences, in faculty meetings, and through conversations with colleagues. It is a term used often, but I am still not sure if it has been clearly defined.

Some mistakenly assume that rigor means making things more difficult. Others believe it means piling on the work. A few say that they can't define rigor, but they know it when they see it.

If teachers are to achieve rigor, we must aspire to something more specific. Too bad the dictionary is of little help:

Rigor
1. (a) Harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment: severity. (b) The quality of being unyielding or inflexible. (c) An act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty.
2. A tremor caused by a chill.
3. A condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable.
4. Strict precision or exactness.

It is this understanding that has led to the push-down and pile-on syndrome. College-level books are now being taught in high schools. Middle school students are tackling works and ideas once assigned to high school students. Now, 20 minutes of homework for elementary kids has become two hours of cruelty.

Rigor is not defined by the text -- it comes from what students do. It is not standard across a curriculum -- it is individual to each student's needs. It is not quantified by how much gets crammed into a school day -- it is measured in depth of understanding.

Rigor is a result, not a cause.

Rigor and David Foster Wallace

For proof, we need look no further than the great 20th-century novelist, David Foster Wallace. In 1994, he taught English 102 (Literary Analysis: Prose Fiction) at Illinois State University. His syllabus does not feature the heavyweights of literature that are recommended by the Common Core. No Hamlet. No Crime and Punishment. No Canterbury Tales.

Instead, his required texts were Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are the Children?, Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs, Stephen King's Carrie, and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, among others. Interesting that a writer known for being a little pretentious might have known a thing or two about rigor. In the syllabus, Foster-Wallace writes:

Don't let any lightweightish-looking qualities of the texts delude you into thinking this will be a blow-off-type class. These "popular" texts will end up being harder than more conventionally "literary" works to unpack and read critically.

There it is. Rigor is the result of work that challenges students' thinking in new and interesting ways. It occurs when they are encouraged toward a sophisticated understanding of fundamental ideas and are driven by curiosity to discover what they don't know.

Foster-Wallace makes a point in his syllabus to say that his course will not be what many would expect: "heavy-duty lit-crit or Literary Theory." Instead, he has the broader and more practical aim to develop students that can. . .

. . . read fiction more deeply, to come up with more interesting insights on how pieces of fiction work, to have informed intelligent reasons for liking or disliking a piece of fiction, and to write -- clearly, persuasively, and above all interestingly -- about stuff you've read.

Let us aspire to something greater than making difficult work for our students. Let's take them to that intersection of encouragement and engagement, where they confront ideas and problems that are meaningful. Let's stretch their thinking. Let's unleash their sophistication. And let's foster a love of deep knowledge. 

हरी ओम !

आज मेरा बड़ा मन कर रहा है के में हिंदी में कुछ लिखुँ।   चलो कबीर के दोहों से सुरुवात किया जाये।

निंदक नियरे राखिए, ऑंगन कुटी छवाय,
बिन पानी, साबुन बिना, निर्मल करे सुभाय।

 जो हमारी निंदा करता है, उसे अपने अधिकाधिक पास ही रखना चाहिए। वह तो बिना साबुन और पानी के हमारी कमियां बता कर हमारे स्वभाव को साफ़ करता है.

भला इस बात को आज के ज़माने में कितने लोग समझते हैं। 

जाति न पूछो साधु की, पूछ लीजिये ज्ञान,
मोल करो तरवार का, पड़ा रहन दो म्यान।

सज्जन की जाति न पूछ कर उसके ज्ञान को समझना चाहिए. तलवार का मूल्य होता है न कि उसकी मयान का – उसे ढकने वाले खोल का.

कहने को बहुत कुछ है पर आज के लिए इतना ही काफी है.

Success comes easy, not respect

One of the funny things about life is: What we enjoy the most is not always what we respect. Popularity is not the same as admiration. They can’t be measured on the same scale. That’s why, to take a quick example, the most successful movies don’t get the best critic ratings. And the best rated films rarely do that well at the box office. Media has often tried to resolve this contradiction by hiring critics who love popular cinema. While their reviews may provide fresh insight, they are seldom convincing. The paradox runs too deep in our psyche.

Millions love to watch Shah Rukh Khan movies. His new release last friday collected Rs 45 crore on day one, setting a new box office record. The adulation he gets is unparalleled. But Indian cinema, however big it gets, however successful it may be, will never be defined not by a Shah Rukh or a Farah Khan. Or even a Raju Hirani. It will be defined by a Satyajit Ray. And a Pather Panchali. Try as hard as you want, you can’t change that. Not at the Oscars. Nor in the history books. No, this is not a conspiracy against popular stars, as Nargis once famously described it. It’s just that admiration and respect come from different places.

Millions of people buy Chetan Bhagat novels. Chetan is invited by the whole world to talk about what he writes and young people today hang on to his every word. Even TIME magazine lists him among the world’s top influencers. But if you ask someone to name a respected Indian novelist in English the answer will be Amitav Ghosh or Salman Rushdie. Or possibly RK Narayan. Chetan doesn’t make the cut. Why? The same reason. The most successful author is not the most respected. Matt Groening is unlikely to ever win the Nobel. But Mahasweta Devi might.

The most popular songs you can think of, the ones that bust the chart and hang in there for months on end, be they about Munni’s badnaami or Sheila’s jawaani, make instant stars out of those who sing them. Their producers become rich. The number of downloads break all records and wherever you go, to a wedding or a nightclub or even a puja mandap, you will hear them blast your ear drums. But do they get the kind of respect that’s reserved for a Mallikarjun Mansoor or a Kumar Gandharva? Will they get you a Bharat Ratna like Bismillah Khan got or Bhimsen Joshi? Naah.

A Subodh Gupta installation, if you have one, marks you as a dollar millionaire. So does a Husain horse. But if you are not into collecting art for just money, if you actually want to treasure the great masters you will hang a Gaitonde on your wall or keep a tiny Somnath Hore on your mantelpiece. It may not fetch you a fraction of the value nor win you oohs and aahs from your friends but you will have the pleasure of owning a work that will probably be remembered much longer.

That’s what differentiates the popular from the great. Real masters rarely get the recognition they deserve in their life time but they survive in our collective memory. Like Allauddin Khan and his Maihar band or Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. Like Vijay Tendulkar or Badal Sarkar. Or an alcohol sodden Ritwick Ghatak who was so all wrong that everyone wrote him off. Except history. Like Saadat Hasan Manto. Or Premchand. Or Jibanananda Das who died, dragged by a tramcar on a Calcutta street. Most of them were unsung in their life time but will survive in our hearts for the magic they brought to our lives. They competed with no one. They never drew crowds.

Stars fade away to make way for new stars. Great artists, on the other hand, remain for all time. Much as you may try, you can’t compare Shiamak Davar with Balasaraswati. Or a Yo Yo Honey Singh with MS Subbulakshmi. So when I hear everyone extol the great leadership qualities of Narendra Modi and how he will change India forever, I ponder. Isn’t it a bit too early to assess him? Leaders are not judged by their popularity or instant appeal. That is what wins them elections. But, in the long run, they they are judged by the respect they earn. Indira Gandhi won a war against Pakistan but went to jail because India felt she failed us when she imposed the Emergency. Jayaprakash Narayan was a much smaller leader compared to her. So was Lal Bahadur Shastri in comparison to the much loved Nehru whose big shoes he tried to fill. But the history, I suspect, will remember Shastri and Narayan much longer. Not for their popular appeal. But for the men they were.

In our great urgency for love and admiration we often forget the immense power of the understated. The understated lasts much longer in our hearts because we don’t just love them, we revere them. So keep searching for your heroes. Don’t just pick them up from the popular pantheon. Who knows? You may discover a Kailash Satyarthi. The Nobel Prize guys got lucky because they looked hard enough.

Turn Students into Life-Long Learners

Educators wear many hats, but their main job is to engage their students so that they become life-long learners. As a teacher, there is nothing worse than presenting a lesson only to find your entire class starring back at you with the “huh?” look in their eyes. Once students reach this point, it’s often hard to turn them on to the subject matter that they didn’t grasp the first time around. In order to effectively reach them, educators need to find innovative methods for teaching students. There are many ways to achieve this, as discussed below.


Increase Student Involvement
One of the most effective ways to increase student engagement is to get them involved in the lesson. Once students are able to interact and experiment with a subject matter, they are more likely to grasp it. Try one of the below activities to get your students involved with your lessons.

Introduce an eLearning System – It’s no surprise that students enjoy interacting with technology. Invite them to their enhance learning through the use of an eLearning system that helps you plan and deliver your lessons seamlessly. Interactive learning systems allow students to have real-time discussions with one another about the subject matter, as well as explore the Internet to learn more. Many teachers have seen students become increasingly engaged in class when using this technology because they can learn at their own pace. Students are also able to gear their study towards the type of learner they are.

Present Real World Problems – Often, students have difficulty understanding certain lessons because they aren’t able to apply them to real life situations. No matter what you’re teaching, you have to make the lesson come alive by finding a way to relate it to your students’ lives. Present the material in a way that will excite them. Once students are able to apply a concept to their lives, they are much more likely to connect with and value it.

Students as Teachers – Another great way to get your students involved in your lessons is to make them experts. Split your class up into groups and assign them a topic. Work with each group and give them the tools and resources that will help them become experts on that concept. Once students are comfortable with the subject matter, have them teach the class. Students will immediately be able to relate to one another and find this style interesting and fun.

By increasing student engagement in the classroom, teachers can create life-long learners. When students are excited about a subject, the sky’s the limit.