by Stefanie Whitney

• I am a food sharer. Yes, I do want to try what you are having.
• I prefer Cream of Wheat to oatmeal.
• I constantly forget to bring my reusable grocery bags to the grocery store.
• I am often late. One of those “fast and loose with my time and the time of others” type of folk.

 
And, the list goes on...

• Over my 44 + 356 days on this earth (Pisces, Gen X/Xennial), I have shifted my political leanings from a Benjamin Moore “Rose Quartz” to one of their 2022 colors of the year “Mysterious” blue.

• I am a teacher who uses too many paper copies.
• I am an English teacher who has personally left dozens of books unfinished (YOLO).
• I am an educator who is currently not in the classroom.
• My office is “downtown” and I’m positioned among “the district.”
• I am working on acquiring my administrative license.
• I believe in moving away from a grading system devised to label & divide folk and moving toward one that, to me, feels more human-centered.
• I believe we have systems that have catastrophically divided humans and caused irreparable damage and our only way forward is to fix those systems.
• I am an impatient advocate of change who also believes that change happens one conversation, one reflection, and one brave soul at a time.

I’m only getting started, but for the sake of time and my increasing anxiety, I will stop for now. 

If this list is all you know about me, then you have likely formed judgments, perhaps even drawn conclusions that all point to: I am or I am not “your kind of people”. Yet, I hope curiosity will encourage you to learn more. 

As one of “them”, I have also found myself hustling to find my “us.”

• To find my fellow relative time folk and bolster ourselves up with bountiful reasons we are more right than the timelier “thems”.
• To fly high my cream of wheat freak flag in hopes of attracting a few porridge wielding bears. I’ll even accept Goldilocks as long as she keeps her spoon out of my bowl. (I am a food sharer, but… Covid.)
• Of course, I seek community with other folk currently not in the classroom, so we can form a human shield to fend off the “cut their positions” slings and “don’t work directly with kids” arrows coming our way.

 
In so many ways and to so many people, I am one of “them.”
 
And for the longest time, I have hustled to show the “us’s” that I’m one of the good “them’s.” 

I am hustling to be one of the good ones. 

Martha Beck believes that “Integrity is the cure for unhappiness.” I’m currently reading The Way of Integrity by Beck, and she explores the concept of hustling. Brene Brown deserves credit as the first to help me reflect on my own hustle, and Beck manages to take my self-reflection to another level. 

Beck explains, 

Literal and figurative battle lines are drawn because of people serving a culture–and, as Beck uncovers, often battle lines built not on our integrity but on our desire to fit in, to belong.
 
This quest to belong can be as catastrophic as a world war or as seemingly innocuous as cheering for your favorite hockey team. Seemingly is appropriate here because I cannot be the only one who has observed cheering turn into leering, then smearing, and finally–something much more sinister.
 
So–about our personal hustles. My personal understanding of both Brown’s and Beck’s explanations of the “hustle” is to do whatever it takes to be accepted into a culture of people, often at the expense of our own internal nature, or value systems. The definition is easy to accept. However, the extent to which we can get lost in the hustle is much harder to actualize, which is why Beck’s request of readers at the end of chapter two “admit–just to yourself–that some of your actions are designed to impress or fit in with other people” shriveled up my soul like a raisin. 

As a former member of the “not a math person” team, I feel a bit proud of my observation that division seems to be the most popular of the mathematical operations (I also feel flummoxed, sometimes defeated, and always overwhelmed by this reality).  I’m not sure if test scores or climate surveys quantify this, but observational data suggests we have been and continue to be really good at division in this profession, in this state, in this country, in this world. 

Continue ad nauseam. ​

I know I am most motivated by curiosity and compassion for humans, animals, and the occasional inanimate object. Because of curiosity and compassion, I believe that crossing over to hang with “thems”, while initially unsettling, almost always ends in a feeling of warmth in my insides and a smile that is hard to wipe from my face. 

There are rare moments when this type of rendezvous doesn’t result in blossoming warmth and shared smiles. Upon reflection, I realize in many of these failed moments that I was/am hustling–trying to cajole, convince, fit in, or defend myself–often through evasive jokes, ducking and weaving, and the occasional speed talking. I leave these conversations frustrated, short of breath, and filled with the sinking dread that my position as a “them” has been solidified.
 
In the spirit of selective attention, I’m struck by just how often even those with the best of intentions manage to divide us. Take this recent quote by Adam Grant:

My initial reaction: “Yeah. See? It is them, not us.” 

But I have been an active member of both cultures. I know where I feel most myself and how I show up among folk who inspire me rather than how I show up when inclined to bring my hustle. I prefer a culture of humility, but I need to frequently pause and consider how I am contributing and upholding this culture rather than perpetuating a culture where hustle and arrogance are the play calls. 
 
Grant brings up an example that does not have to be about division. If I accept my role in the situation and choose to avoid deflection and blame, then I understand he is talking about being human—choosing arrogance or humility. We have choices. Timshel.

And while both of these things can be simultaneously true, what is more important is that I stop trying to convince anyone else of this reality and simply know my own truth.

• I chose this career path because I believe in helping lead change.
• I choose to live by the values of compassion and curiosity; everything that sits right in my soul is grounded in these two beliefs.
• Most everything I do that leaves me hustling is often untethered from these two values.
• If untethered, I then need to figure out how to get grounded or I need to determine the purpose and value of this experience.

This isn’t to say that every time I am uncomfortable I’m untethered from my values; I may just need to more clearly identify the ties that bind. Discomfort is growth–an opportunity to reflect on what is causing me to feel this way. 

Going forward, I am reminded that at the first sign of battle lines being drawn an opportunity exists to calmly step over the divide and ask questions. Listen and seek to understand. Fight the instinct to grab my ruler and Sharpie (it’s taking everything in me to not make a hurricane path reference here).
 
When we are in places where lines of division are being drawn, rather than choosing sides, I strive to be an outsider who starts asking more questions. (In this regard: I have been known, on rare occasions, to weaponize questions--sorry Socrates—so I find it helpful to check my tone of voice and know my authentic intent of asking before boldly striving for that outsider status.)

“Us vs. Them” only exists if we let it. We are the perpetrators of division and discord. We can either pick up the golden apple, pull out a sharp knife, and argue over who gets rewarded, or we can peel the superficial skin off to reveal the parts underneath where common ground exists. (Too much? Did that allusion get out of hand? Probably. Some will like it; some won’t. Oops, I did it again. Gah. Free Britney. Opportunities for division are everywhere.)

​by Heather M. F. Lyke

We all know reading is important. I mean, just take a look at this infographic (aka: my attempt to summarize all the layers of importance).

Since reading is such an essential skill, it’s not surprising that the questions I receive most in my role as Teaching and Learning Director for Dover-Eyota  schools revolve around reading.

• How can I help my child read more?
• Do you have books suggestions for my reluctant reader?
• My grandkid seems to be reading below grade-level: how do I get him up to speed?
• My niece once loved reading, but now never picks up a book—is there a holiday gift I could get her to help her reengage?

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​Simply put, there is a lot of passion out there for helping our youth become strong readers.

Plus, ‘tis the season of holiday sales, gift giving, vacation days, and new year’s resolutions…

​Combine these truths, and this becomes a perfect time for finding and sharing books, for having extra time to enjoy literature, and for setting new reading goals.

So, what can we do to support young readers and to foster within them a desire to read that lasts a lifetime?

Here are three sets of ideas:

Read aloud to your child.
According to Scholastic (2019), a powerful predictor of kids’ reading frequency is having a parent [or other adult] who personally reads aloud to/with the child 5-7 days a week. Commonly, this is something we do with younger children, but recent studies have shown that even middle-school-aged youth love to be read to.
 
Read around your child.
Show the children in your life that you, too, are a reader. “Children who see adults reading and enjoying it,” according to Pearson Education (2021), “are much more likely to want to read themselves.” Maria Russo and Pamela Paul, authors of How to Raise a Reader, note that “when I’m sitting there on my couch, reading a book, and my kids are doing their own thing, I like to think, I’m parenting right now—they can see me reading this book”—conversely, if “right after dinner, the first thing you do is scroll through your phone, open up your laptop, or watch TV, kids are likely to take note.”

Listen to audiobooks together.
Audiobooks support literacy skills in ways that physical books sometimes can’t. The web resource Reading Rockets (2003) shares that audiobooks model strong interpretive reading, make difficult vocabulary words or dialects more accessible, and enhance listening skills among other things.

Tip: there are a lot of ways to access free audiobooks. Visit the website LibriVox or try the app Libby (you just need a public library card!).

Keep literature in reach.
Pearson Education (2021) shares a few tips: at home, have books on accessible shelves and coffee tables; when traveling, toss a few books in the car or suitcase; and when headed to an appointment, have a book at the ready should there be time spent in the waiting room. Personally, I’m currently reading 4 books: an audiobook, a bedside-table book, a living-room book, and one waiting-in-line book (which I actually access electronically on my phone).

Embrace whatever text they choose.
From nonfiction to fiction, from poetry to graphic novels, from magazines to thick novels, from comic strips to junk-mail…anything with text is an opportunity to build vocabulary, to increase interest, and grow reading stamina. Additionally, each genre has its own unique trends when it comes to plot structures, character development, and literary techniques: reading widely exposes one to all the trends, making it easier to navigate future works of the same genre.   ​

Look past levels.
Once a reader is able to decode basic words, according to the School Library Journal (2020), which is typically around first grade, students should be encouraged to “read a wide range of texts…they should read easy books to things that kick their butt. The variation of difficulty does matter.” Simpler texts can build fluency, enjoyment, and stamina; while a text outside of one’s comfort level can introduce a reader to new vocabulary and increase understanding of what skills they’ve yet to master. ​

Ask questions.
Reading teachers and authors Karen Szymusiak and Franki Sibberson (2007) share the tip that adults should “…talk about the books they [the students] are reading” by having conversations rooted in “open-ended questions they can use in discussing their reading.” They suggest questions that fit each of three layers:

1. questions about the self -- How are you like the character of Rory?
2. questions about the text -- You said it was set in Texas: how do you know? Can you show me where it says that in the book?
3. questions about the world -- What you read reminds me of what we saw at the grocery store yesterday. How is the puppy in a vest that you just read about like the one we saw with the women getting milk?).

Leverage hook books.
Reading a book series, going on author binges, rereading a favorite book—these sometimes get bad reps. Yet, they are integral to creating lifelong readers. Author Devon Corneal shared on Read Brightly (2021) that rereading helps learners develop strong word recognition, notice patterns, enhance fluency, strengthen comprehension, and foster confidence. Similarly, a reader who is hooked on a series deepens their connections with characters, increases comprehension, spends more time reading, and quickens the process of finding what book to read next, according to Edutopia (2016): likewise, reading multiple books by the same author can have similar impacts. 

Celebrate books and reading.
Make literacy a reward. Make going to the library, visiting the bookmobile, or browsing at a bookstore a regular and joyful event. Combine reading with what your learner enjoys. For me, that was lunch with my father at Wong’s in downtown Rochester after spending a summer morning with my mom at the library. For my third-grade niece and nephew, it’s being allowed time to read uninterrupted in their small, end-of-bunkbed nooks they created with their father last year—simple plywood nests filled with blankets, pillows, and a few favorite reads. Lifelong reading is fostered by the memories of contentment we nurture now. ​

If you ever want to dig more deeply into reading, I’d love to connect! Until then, I hope you and the youth in your life find a great piece of literature to cuddle up with and enjoy this holiday season. 

​by Julie Brock

Shrouded in blame and punishment, accountability has been twisted into a punitive action versus the rich conversation it actually is intended to spur. To account is to reconcile, balance, see the full picture so future decisions are better informed.
 
In his Fast Company article, Four Ways You’re Getting Accountability Wrong, Mark Lukens explains why a culture of accountability is vital to the success of any organization. The principles Luken presents ask leaders to:

1. focus on the goal
2. look at what is working well
3. create a culture in which progress includes failing forward.

Depending on how many classes of students move through a classroom in a day, it is possible to have three to six ‘micro-organizations’ that look to an educator as the ‘CEO’ responsible for setting the tone and expectations of their collective work.
 
How, then, do we function as a leader cultivating a collective culture of accountability as well as one of individual progress?

Mark Friedman, author of Trying Hard isn’t Good Enough, created a data framework that helps communities work toward big, shared goals. The crux of his argument is that no one organization can own the results of an entire community. It takes many organizations contributing to get sustainable solutions. Within each contributing organization are departments or programs that contribute to the overall effectiveness of the organization. For example, a large school district may think that they do own the graduation rate for their community, but they do not—they do not have every student who lives in their boundaries attending their school, so they share that result with other education settings.

Each educational setting can contribute to the overall graduation rate; yet, it does not have to look exactly the same. It is why school choice exists. Imagine each of those settings creating a culture of accountability in which students understand the systems serving them and also understand their role within the overall culture. It creates collaboration, cooperation, and communication. 

The conversation that data inspires what leads to actionable change. Our educational systems are limping along. The last blow of COVID damaged our barge and we cannot bail the water out faster than it is coming in [1]. And it is all levels. No educational setting is immune. We are a fleet of zero—grad school education settings taking on water and pivoting to figure out if the bucket brigade will work from a different angle.
 
That’s the thing with pivoting. I think about basketball. Once that pivot foot is set, it cannot move before a dribble. Players are stuck in one place until a pass or a path opens up for them to move. It is stationary, but all the while we keep spinning…thinking something will change.

But it doesn’t.
 
Instead, I ask…

• How long will we stay in place on the sinking barge?
• How long will we wish away a pandemic that will not abide by our will?
• How long will we, as a community, admire those on the barge trying to bail themselves out while throwing pithy advice across the bay? Or worse yet, gaslighting their circumstances:
  • “It’s hard for all of us.”
  • “You signed up for this.”
  • “It can’t be that bad.”

All the while, people are screaming at school board members, students are throwing things at teachers, and we comment safely from the shore.
 
The state of education can be overwhelming, stifling, and feel futile. But a classroom’s contribution matters. A department’s contribution matters. A building’s contribution matters. An afterschool program’s contribution matters. They matter when we hold ourselves accountable to a shared result. Students want to learn. According to the 2019 Minnesota Student survey, 97.8% of Olmsted County 9th graders (current 11th graders) said “if something interests me, I’ll learn more about it.” In that same survey, 99.2% of 11th graders said they will learn more about something that interests them.

Maybe we need to co-design around standards with students. Ask them how they want to learn the standards, what will resonate, and what will ultimately spur them to learn more within the content area [2]. Results Based Accountability™ (RBA), Friedman’s framework, asks for a community of people to solve community problems together. It isn’t a framework that leaves people behind. If we adopt this framework within communities, new partnerships start to blossom. Youth who move between organizations are more likely to be supported when there is a framework holding us together around the success of youth. Pair RBA and the co-design process with students, and now we have created partnership, collaboration, and ownership for youth over their own education, potentially fueling that 97-99% curiosity students reported in 2019. ​

The nice thing about RBA is that we can start right now, today, using it in classrooms. We don’t have to wait for the community to get on board: it can start a ripple effect. In fact, we may already live in a community that is using RBA to effect systemic change. Strive Together is a national nonprofit that has seventy communities across the nation doing this kind of work. If you live in Minnesota, there are seven cradle-to-career communities and two promise neighborhoods working for systemic change.
 
Accountability isn’t about shame and blame. It has to be reclaimed and untwisted from its negative connotation to create space for creativity, for innovation, and a way to get those on the shore to help get those on the sinking barge off and together—find our way into the next wave of education.
 
Interested in learning more about RBA and using it in your classroom / department / building / feeder system / district? Let me know and we’ll collaborate!

​By Katie Miller

I am a lover of words. For the last twenty years I have been surrounded by words in my career as an English Learner teacher and an Instructional Coach for a Spanish Immersion program. I love creating a vocabulary lesson where students get to explore, dig, discover, and use new words. The linguistic side of language makes me quiver with excitement when a student uses a new word in their oral or written language. I even call myself a “walking thesaurus” as I love to have students learn synonyms and antonyms to expand their daily vocabulary and giggle when they begin to imitate my words.
 
My students have taught me an important lesson over the years that is a step beyond my vocabulary lessons. They taught me that words can be powerful. Words have power not only in the academic world, like my vocabulary lessons, but in the social and emotional world as well.  Each word that is spoken has meaning. Even the most simple words, like “hello,” have meaning to both the speaker and the listener. The speaker has a meaning, but the listener may interpret it differently.  Our words are powerful to our students, families, and colleagues.

How can we as educators change the way we use our words to make them positive and affirming to all?
 
Here is an example of where words matter. ​​

​This student was validated that he was creative and had great imaginative skills, but was redirected to follow the hallway expectations. If I would have said the first statement, he may have felt as though he had no other option and just had to “follow the rules.” Plus, it was a much more fun way to go back to his classroom for him and me!
​
This is one example of how words can be powerful with adults too (not just our students).

Walking down the hall, or in the staff lounge, one might overhear a conversation about a student. It may sound something like this:

Think about how someone overhearing this conversation now perceives Johnny? How do you think Johnny felt when he was told to “knock it off”? Did that phrase frustrate him more and make it more difficult to redirect him?

​What if you heard the teacher say this instead?

This teacher validated the student’s need to fidget, along with their love of a good beat, while providing the opportunity for the teacher and class to keep focused on the lesson. Also, think about the teacher who is overhearing the second conversation. Not only did they hear that Johnny could be a great musician someday, but also how affirming and positive that other teacher was with their student.
 
The article “15 Ways to Bring More Positive Language into Your Classroom and School” from We Are Teachers provides a great infographic with examples of how to tweak phrases to be both affirming and positive. 

Words can have power with families as well. I have had many nights where I check my email at home to see an email from a parent who is upset about what happened to their child at school. I have had sleepless nights about some of these emails as to how I was going to handle the discussion with the parent the next day. Then I discovered one of my favorite phrases, pulled from the author Todd Whitaker in his book What Great Principals Do Differently: Twenty Things That Matter Most: “I’m so sorry that happened to you.” From the start, this validates the feelings of the parent, student, or colleague, and opens up the lines of communication immediately. No matter what, someone feels something about the situation. It doesn’t put blame on anyone, but rather affirms to the person that you care and are willing to listen.

I ask that you be cognizant of your words tomorrow, next week, and beyond. Treat them with the power they hold and use that power wisely.

​The old phrase “think before you speak” is as true today as it was 20 years ago when I started my career in education. I hope you fall in love with positive and powerful words, too!

​By Gina Meinertz

The educators in Spring Grove knew the value of authentic learning experiences for students. We found some success with classroom jobs, math problems from real world experience, discussions based around student interest, and student choice in assessment. While these efforts were valuable and necessary in the quest to make learning relevant, they still had not motivated all our students and had not brought together our teachers in a way that broke down their silos. What was the missing link? A community partnership grounded in place-based learning.

A community partnership is a relationship between the teachers and students of a school with an organization that is long-term and mutually beneficial. The participants understand the value of the work together. They also believe and agree on common outcomes and learning objectives from the experience. In Spring Grove’s journey to become a community-based school, we have learned what makes a partnership a bonding and motivating experience.

We have multiple successful community partnerships to use as examples: a farm partnership with our middle school, and outdoor classrooms and a heritage center partnership in our elementary, and business partnership in the high school. We also have partnerships that are ending, adapting, or just an idea. Community partnerships are a living curriculum in which the relationship and experience drive the future, which is what makes the learning experiences deeper and authentic.  ​

A great attribute of a community partnership is that it is available and beneficial to every school and community. Every school has the opportunity to create a relationships with the people and organizations around it. Every student has the opportunity to make decisions, research, and take action for the greater good. And every community has the opportunity to benefit from more educators and students designing, analyzing, and working to improve something they care about.

Now that you are convinced that you need to create a community partnership within your school, how do you start? What steps do you need to take in order to cultivate relationships and spark a drive to work together? I will share steps with you. These steps will look more like building a campfire than walking a stairway. You will need to put the right tools and people together and then wait and support for that spark to build into a flame.

• Create a partnership of interested educators. The educators will be the drivers of the experience. They will be writing curriculum around experiential learning and communicating outcomes that connect to the standards. They will need to hold strong relationships within themselves, with the students, and with the people representing the community partnership. They will need to work out organizational tactics, roles of contribution, and ways to assess outcomes. This will not be an easier way to educate, but it will be more rewarding. The educators will need to trust each other and also be willing to fail. They will need to see themselves as coaches and facilitators who are learning alongside the students and guiding next steps instead of experts who will always know the next step of learning.

• Find a partner within the community. The adults form the organization who will be partnering with your school need to be invested and interested. They need to be willing to share their space, data, and goals for the future. They need to understand students’ development needs and tendencies and understand that this meaningful type of work will take time. Students will bring inspiration and creativity, but will also need structure, clarity, and support. The partner will need to be able to create an actionable outcome that is not too big, but also not superficial or fake. Students and educators will only benefit from a partnership in which their time and efforts will truly benefit the outside entity.

• Identify clear outcomes. Outcomes will be communicated in a variety of ways. This is ideal. Outcomes need to be clear and co-created by students, educators, partners, and the community at large. This will allow for grants to be written to support efforts and celebrations to take place as outcomes are achieved.

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• Understand the partnership experience will go through phases. Just like our relationship, partnerships will be always changing. Make sure plenty of time is spent in relationship building. Spend time exploring, asking questions, and spending time together before jumping into the work that needs to be accomplished. Don’t be afraid to take time throughout the experience to slow down and just enjoy each other. Plan times for metacognition, reflection, and building energy. Modeling this will help our students to understand the flow of work and how this relates to the relationships involved. Sometimes, this even involves ending a partnership. Be open to moving to a new location or working with someone new if you are having trouble identifying outcomes, communicating, or finding meaningful work to pursue as a team.

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• Pursue support. A partnership will need layers of support. Communicate with instructional coaches, leadership, and outside entities. We knew that we would like to move to competency-based reporting to bring our educational outcomes together with our partnership outcomes, so we brought in an expert to guide our experience. Look for examples, ask questions, and approach the experience with curiosity and respect.

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• Enjoy! Last but definitely not least, enjoy the experience. Remember to sit back and watch the students as they dive into this meaningful work. If it isn’t meaningful to them, they probably need more voice in the outcomes or how to achieve them. Remember that even if this work feels messy you will have more meaningful and memborable experience that will leave your students better prepared to interact with the complicated world we live in. 

 
Some of you will choose to finish reading this article here, but others will be looking for some examples of the shifts and changes our teams made in creating these partnerships. You want to hear the story so that you can compare yours. Feel free to look for similarities and analyze different. Reach out to us if you would like. We know collective learning helps us all to move forward to transform education to experiences of deeper meaning.  

Our middle school team has had the goal for about two years to break off from our high school programming to create a program more grounded in relationship with more developmentally appropriate growth experiences. We started with a math lab that connected middle and high school students around individual growth experiences in math. This setting was innovative with two teachers in one shared space. The space had breakout rooms, walls we could write on and ways for students to advance in math with flexibility in scheduling. The teachers and students were constantly reflecting and improving their approach, but our data was telling us our students needed more collaboration and more connection of the mathematical processes to real world occurrences.

The pandemic made us shift our programming to pods. We couldn’t have students intermingling, so we changed to a middle school teaming model where our teachers were teaming in instruction. We moved to Humanities and STEM programming with 7th and 8th grade students only. The teachers created a series of interdisciplinary experiences throughout the year including a park partnership where students worked with an environmental educator to map a native prairie and wildflower plan for a city park. They presented their work to the Parks and Rec and City Council Representatives before planting the garden in the spring. This work brought all students, teachers, and subjects together around learning and created an authentic audience, but we still saw a needed to build a sense of belonging, pride, and connection for the students. The teachers knew they wanted to continue to work together but needed something deeper to bring together the standards in a way that is consistent and developmentally aligned throughout the entire year. We used a Montessori article named “Erdkinder” to back our decision to connect our middle school age students to the land an phenomena around them. Research supports students at this specific age needing to take steps away from the cohesive family units to make connections with the land and greater community around them.

This led us to our farm school partnership. We saw an opportunity to bring the learning standards togethers around competencies. We brought in Rose Colby from New Hampshire to help us to map, connect, and create competencies that ensure interdisciplinary learning experiences that extend beyond academics. Our teachers know what life skills they are supporting while also mapping the content delivered in a way that connects and supports the content in other subject areas. Essential questions guide the learning, discoveries, and group projects students will embark on throughout the partnership. Teachers will support projects, deliver supporting content, and continue to co-create the learning with students with each weekly visit to the farm throughout this school year.  

Sitting on the front porch at the farm this summer, our educators and farmer engaged in a conversation of inspiration and depth. They discussed how values guide decisions. They compared efficiency, money, power, and happiness affect the decisions we make. They discussed land ownership and the historical inequities that need to be considered as we embark on our journey. We left that front porch understanding the weight of importance this learning journey holds for us and the students. We are entering a multi-generational relationship that includes people, pigs, land, the people before us, and the sustainability of the future. We hope for all participants to question, connect, and build a foundation of decision making that will affect how they impact the world. 

Our elementary teachers have been offering multi-age and traditional classrooms as an option for more than five years. Parents, students, and teachers know that giving options for student learning are beneficial for all. As a group of multi-age teachers met in a community of practice during the spring of the pandemic, we wondered how we could adapt our classroom to be safe and engaging knowing that we will be coming back to a very different educational experience than we left when schools went home in the March of 2020. I had worked with an educator from Norway and visited schools and daycare programs in Norway two years before. I had observed how the programming in this cold part of the world engaged with the outdoors much more vividly than the school from the United States that I had observed. We reach out to our Norwegian partners to find out how they were coming back to learning during a pandemic. They shared how they moved meals, classrooms, and learning objectives outside. All participants felt safer, but also more engaged and inquisitive. Our team was inspired and set out to research and create outdoor classrooms.

Our city and parents were as excited as our teachers to embark on this journey. The city funded fixing up outdoor buildings with optional closing sides to block wind. Our teachers started to use a method called storylining to map out and link standards with outdoor phenomena and locations. Students jumped into their outdoor experiences with curiosity, excitement, courage, and preparedness. Teachers co-created learning objectives by helping students to categorize their questions into learning themes.

The three teachers who created outdoor classrooms planned and planted native prairie gardens, community gardens, and improved spaces within our community. They said the experience forever changed the way they will teacher. This year, we didn’t offer outdoor versus indoor classrooms. Instead, this programming will live within our system. We will start more grow labs, start composting programming, and continue to expand on our outdoor learning experiences as an elementary system. 

Giants of the Earth Heritage Center is an active organization within Spring Grove. They research stories, connect families, help families to understand their history, and create educational experiences and displays.  They have created experiences with Spring Grove Schools for years such as a children’s parade for the town festivities, supporting ancestorial research projects for students, and writing grants jointly. These experiences have laid a strong foundation in which to grow a partnership upon. For the first time this year, we have students researching, designing, and creating displays for the community to view. We are also hoping to move our after-school and surround care offerings to this community location this school year. This will allow our two programs to bring more ages together in experiential learning. We will create a weekly schedule in which students will engage in cultural learning activities that will be united with adults, elders, and other community members. We will also spend one day a week partnering with a mental health organization to teach students resilient and caring preventive well-being and collaborative skills to support ethics and values.
 
We also hope to create a research partnership in which our students work with experts to research the early histories of our community. There are some missing links of knowledge of the people who first lived in our area, and we hope to connect with American Indian tribes and archeological organizations to better paint the picture of the entire history of our community. 

We have been documenting our high school students’ progress toward College and Career ready indicators as defined by the Redefining Ready goals distributed by AASA. We support our students to graduate with these indicators fulfilled beyond their course and grade point requirements. We having been shifting our schedule to support this whole child thinking such as a restricting of our advisory time to include foci such as connecting and supporting wellbeing, coaching students in the support skills of learning, and focusing individually and in small groups on our career and college preparedness and interests. We have also created a Redefining Ready cover page to communicate more about our student’s growth and potential the Minnesota Department of Education’s report card is able. Next steps will include more individual shift of tracking student’s growth. We are creating prototypes of portfolios to collect evidence of students’ passions, strengths, and experiences that will contribute to their success.
 
We also created a Business Experience/CEO course where students partner with four to five businesses to use the businesses’ data and vision to implement a design cycle of improvement. Students’ participated in creating newsletter and social media pages, researched the most successful businesses in small towns, and created prototypes used by the businesses in improvement.
 
The partnerships in Spring Grove have helped us to create a community-based school. Students of all ages get to make a difference within the community around them. They learn from and with people of all ages to dig deeply into the values, history, and future of our small town. Place-based learning helps our students to not only be prepared for their future, but also to be empowered and important youthful members of our current society. 

Ideas from Lazerbeak & Ilan Blanck, compiled by Nick Truxal

We recently had the great pleasure of speaking with Lazerbeak and Ilan Blanck on our podcast, where we discuss mental health, creativity, curiosity, and a growth mindset.  One thread that, authentically or through sheer force of will, pulled these pieces together was the ability to create and foster a thriving community—a talent Lazerbeak and Ilan have proven to be particularly adept at over their many years in the music industry. 
 
The piece that most intrigues me is that students thirst for community and belonging, yet when educators spend time on building a culture and community, it’s often we tend to build it for our students.  Occasionally, we build it with our students.  In terms of clubs and organizations, we sometimes build it through our students.  However, I have yet to see an educator help students learn how to build a community in which they can belong.
 
In trying to break down the component parts that we may use to help students with community building, we journeyed through several layers of an umbrella process.  Ilan represents these umbrella parts by recommending that we: 

1. Be organized. “Remember people... remember names… remember dates.  Remember who hasn’t [been] seen in awhile… and promises made to get together.”
2. Follow up on those things
3. Be fun to be around and be very charming.  Just be a lovely, good person.

Organization
Of course, we can teach structure and organization.  Through the conversation, Lazerbeak and Ilan elucidated that the organization of a community requires building an organized system that others can easily join.  This also requires having a structure to reach out to those we admire or value—a clear system through which we can reach out to others.  Structured discussions are wonderful in class, but we need to have the skills to engage in face to face or digital environments—to make calls, send emails, begin conversations, or “send out feelers.”

Follow Ups
Following up can include strategies of organization (one strategy they shared outside of this podcast is to keep a list of names and conversations as they take place).  We can, of course, also lean on calendar reminders, clock apps, and other technologies to be notified to follow up.

Being Fun
The piece that may be the hardest to teach—essentially having a tone of approachability—they luckily also had specific ideas for. 

• Showing appreciation whenever possible: things such as handwritten notes, sincere verbal thank yous, or just returning the favor. 
• Showing a sincere curiosity for the work and thoughts of others, both through that initial reach out and in an ongoing fashion.  Such as, how is their dog doing, and what happened with that great song draft they’d created? 
• Taking care of ourselves so we can perform at our best.  They recommended gratitude journals and mindfulness in order to stay at “peak us.”  

So!  I am sincerely curious as to who is out there.  This is my attempt to reach out and see if we can interact a little more often.  I’d like to belong to a community of people who want to grow.  I want to be a part of a community that wants to grow together and that wants to help others to grow.  What say you?  And even if you aren’t interested—thank you for being engaged enough to read this far.