"Pound the Rock" ...A Grassroots Adventure

So going back to January, after Christmas break, our principal showed us a video about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, back when they were way sucky. As their coach and Warren Sapp (I hope I'm remembering this correctly!) struggled to bring the team out of the mud and muck and into pigskin glory, their motto became to always "Pound the Rock", and Mr. B (our principal) argued that, although pigskin wasn't our game, the concept of "pounding the rock" translated quite well to the profession of education. If something doesn't work, try something else until it does. Pound the rock. I've kind of taken it up as my personal mantra when things get tough in my classroom.

Today was our end of school teacher inservice day. Sort of....we participate in a program that allows students passing their classes to get out of school early, allowing kids who need extra intervention to recieve it. So technically, I still have another week left. Either way...today was a teacher inservice day.

I know a lot of teachers who are, for lack of a better description, brain dead at the end of the year. (**Edit: I reread this, and "brain dead" sounds TERRIBLE! I don't at all mean that they're idiots. I mean that at the end of the year, everyone's tired and ready to just wrap things up.) Tired. Worn out. Exhausted. Running on survival mode. Fresh ideas are the last thing on their minds. But me, that's not how I operate. I actually, as exhausted as I am from the year, find that the end of the year is when I do my most clear thinking. Really. And it's acutally because I'm worn out and tired. It makes sense, I swear! At the end of the year, I'm tired, and I do enter survival mode, and things slip. My class isn't running amock or toilet papering my room, but things get lax. The kids are done. They're worn out, too. And the combination of these two things is like putting a tire with a leak under water. The air leaks out, bubbles erupt, and you know exactly where the problem is. ...Same concept. A tired and worn out teacher + kids who are done = the teacher's short-comings are glaringly obvious. ....Which makes it really easy to see what areas need to be revisited and tweaked over the summer. ...And the ideas just start flowing!

I was having a conversation about this with a dear friend just the other week, and we made a humorous list of areas we felt that we needed to make sure we touched on with our kids next year:

1. The definition of talking... We should probably change the terminology altogether to communication. Otherwise, you get student arguments like this, "But I was just whispering!"...."But I was only asking him for a pencil!".

2. Supplies....When the teacher is out of handout pencils, and you don't have any, and she offers you a red pen to write with, it is not polite to scoff at said pen and spend the next two minutes trying to bum one (loudly) off of anyone in the classroom who is moved by your plight.

...There were others, but these are just a couple examples. We laughed, because really, the truth of it may be annoying, but there is humor in the situation, and the alternative to laughing is either crying or becoming bitter, neither of which we feel is very productive.

From this conversation was born the idea that we should pull together a group of teachers willing to discuss some things we thought neeed tweaking in our school, ways that we could make changes, small if need be, a grassroots movement, to the benefit of our students.

And thus was born......

The Meeting of the Minds:  the Brain Trust

We met this afternoon at 3:00...on a Friday...after school officially/unofficially ended. We knew it was a risky time, but this just couldn't wait. I will admit, there was some venting, but it was most certainly productive venting. And lots of great things were brought up and discussed, with some possible solutions that we'd like to further flesh out and bring up to our campus Leadership Team. But aside from all of this is the fact that I work with a group of people who are willing to come for a meeting about next year, at 3:00 on a Friday, at the end of the school year. I think that is pretty amazing, and it is a testament to the caliber of people that call Rayburn home. 

We got a new super this year. With him, he brought a new district motto:  that we are all to Be The One. We live that at Rayburn, and we're going to continue to be the one, pound the rock, do whatever we need to do to help our kids be successful and make our school the best it can be. I am proud to call Rayburn home, and as ready as I am to enjoy the summer, I am so excited to get back to it and make next year even better than this year! Yeah. I can honestly say that while I don't want to wish my summer away, I am super pumped for August to roll back around again!