The HEART of the Matter...

I am writing this with a heavy heart today.  Which is ironic considering the very nature of this post.  Since the school year began, I have been feeling like something was out of place.  It’s like when a picture is hanging crooked on the wall, or when a picture frame has been moved on your mantle.  I knew something was off, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  This year, the air has just felt different, so to speak.  Something was unsettling in the bottom of my stomach, and I have finally realized what it is.  Only, this realization didn’t give me relief.  It’s given me an overwhelming feeling of sadness and unease for the future of our kids.  It’s actually quite simple…

We’ve lost the heart. And we need to do something to GET IT BACK.

The heart is defined as the center of a person’s thoughts and emotions.  It’s the central or innermost part of something.  It’s a hollow or muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation.  

If the heart stops beating…you stop living. 

Think about that concept.  The heart is what keeps you going.  It’s the very center of an organism, and everything else revolves around it, and depends on its very function.  Now, apply this concept to a school.  We can implement all of the most innovative new strategies, programs, standards, and evaluation systems.  We can put behavior plans into place, and set up expectations for our students.  The fact is…none of those things will ever work, nor will they even matter if we don’t have a heart that beats strong, and loud, and that is the very center for which all of those other things will stem from. 

Our educational hearts have stopped beating…and as a result, our schools have stopped living.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to figure out what really makes a school successful.  Is it the test scores?  The teacher evaluation ratings?  The amount of championships won, or the number of referrals?  I’ve thought back through my last nine years as an educator.  I was there when our school still had dust on the ground from construction, and fresh paint drying on the walls.  I was there to put the very first chairs and tables together.  I’ve been there every single step of the way, and it’s been a long journey of ups and downs. These days, there are very few of us left that have been there since day one.  It’s those teachers, the ones that have seen it all, that I have gone to the past few weeks to see if my whole “heart theory” was worth spending the time to write these words.  It’s through those meaningful discussions with my colleagues that I have come to the conclusion that the “heart theory” is absolutely worth it.  It just makes so much sense. 

It works like this…

When you work in a tough school, where the majority of your students live in poverty, and are lacking in most of life’s basic needs, you absolutely need to begin with LOVE.  Our students need to feel like they belong, and that our school is not only a safe place for them, but a place where they can grow, be nurtured, and feel like they are important.  Like they are part of something special and irreplaceable.  That should be our number one focus. Until we achieve that, nothing will change.

When I think about what contributes to a Title I school being successful, there are certain things you have to have in place that can help make your kids feel like they are on top of the world.  You need to have things like Multi-Cultural Fairs, and Literacy/Math Celebrations.  You need to celebrate Veteran’s Day by teaching your students about the men and women that have fought for our country, and you need events like Freedom Marches and Fall Carnivals to get your community and families involved.  You need to have Thanksgiving Food Drives where you collect hundreds of canned goods, and have your needy families come pick up a turkey and all the trimmings.  I was there to distribute those meals during our food drives, and I will never forget the look on their faces when they saw what we had provided for them.  During the holiday season, you can choose a student’s name off a tree in the mailroom, and then go shopping and purchase Christmas presents for that child using a list they made.  You could also have door-decorating contests for the Holidays, and Dress Up Weeks where the whole school would wear PJs for a day, or dress in attire from decades of the past.  You can have clap outs for the whole school when you win a championship for sports, and you can celebrate your successes on the morning news every day.  You should have a ceremony every quarter to celebrate the students that received Honor Roll, and invite their parents to attend. 

We need to show our students that we love them each and every day.  We need to show them that we are proud of them, and that we care about them, and that we want them to each leave a piece of themselves as a legacy for future generations on our campuses.  Academics and learning are the focus of education, but these acts of love are the HEART of education.  They are the driving force that makes the learning happen.

Guys, I can’t stress how important it is to show our pride for our children.  It not only does wonders for them, but also for staff morale.  When things are looking down, or when things are tough, we have to grasp onto those happy moments and never let go.   We recently took our students to the Florida Holocaust Museum after we’d been learning about Anne Frank and the Holocaust.  We tied behavior and grades to this trip, and we honestly took the most amazing group of kids to experience something they never have before.  Not only did they get the chance to extend their learning outside the classroom, but they also were able to hear a Holocaust Survivor Speak.  This is such a rare occurrence these days.  When the speaker asked if any students had questions, one of our kids quietly raised their hand….only they didn’t have a question.  They simply wanted to thank the speaker for letting them hear her story, and they wanted her to know that they appreciated her, and loved the experience.  Another student hugged the docent on the way out, and thanked her for devoting her time to teaching them about the Holocaust today.  

#ProudTeacherMoments

After we were finished with the tour, one of the docents pulled me aside to tell me that we had some of the most well-behaved, intelligent, and wonderful students they’ve ever had visit their museum.  I was told that not only were they impressed with their manners and behavior, but also, they were impressed with how much the students knew about the Holocaust.  This is a testament to not only our teams of teachers, but also to the whole staff here at my school.  We honestly make a difference in our kids’ lives, and we really do have SO MANY kiddos here that care, and that want to learn.  This was such a great life experience for our students, and it made me, and them, very thankful for what we have everyday.  Especially seeing firsthand what so many people had to endure during that horrible time in history.  

When it gets tough…sometimes all it takes is a little reminder of how fabulous our jobs truly are.  

Events like those above not only elevate students, but they elevate the teachers.  I honestly never noticed that I worked at a “difficult school” because I was always so focused on all of the awesome things that our kids did, and all of the accomplishments that we achieved. 

Throughout the past few years, we have been losing the heart little by little.  It’s been getting weaker and weaker.  Now more than ever, we are in serious danger of flat lining unless something is done to revive us.  We need to grab those paddles and shock the heart right back into the life of our schools. 

It’s not a lie that behavior issues might be worse than they’ve ever been, and that the motivation to learn anything has dimmed to almost nothing.  The problem is that we are looking at it in the wrong way.  We are trying to put Band-Aids on the problem rather than trying to look at WHY it’s broken.  We are so focused on the kids that are making the wrong choices, that we’re letting the other students slip right through our fingers.  Our kids are constantly reminded of what they are doing wrong, and they are constantly told what they AREN’T doing. At this time, most teachers are so overwhelmed, exhausted, and frustrated that many of them don’t want to do anything more than their contract requires them to do. It’s not just the students that have given up, the teachers have too.  This is a time when teachers, administrators, parents, district and school staff need to come together more than ever before to unite for the same cause.  We all have the same “WHY,” and we should all be on the same page.

Our kids come from homes where they may not be shown love, acceptance, or a sense of belonging.  We should pride ourselves on the fact that we can at least show them those things while they were at school.  I honestly feel that we would be SHOCKED to see how much the behavior and motivation would improve on our campuses if we simply brought the heart back.  We need to start showing that we will not stand for our schools to become institutions that we don’t even recognize anymore.  We need to stop trying to make our schools something that they may never be.  We need to stop trying to compare schools to other schools, and we need to stop trying to be perfect on paper. 

We have all of the pieces in place.  We have amazing teachers who are the best of the best, but for many, their lights have just started to dim.  We have wonderful office, custodial, and cafeteria staff who go above and beyond on a daily basis.  We have hard-working administrators and school district employees that put their sweat and tears into making education in America something to value.  We have an over-abundance of technology, programs, and curriculum resources that can help our students reach goals they have never imagined were even possible.  Above all else, we have smart, hard-working, beautiful children in our schools that deep down inside want to please us, and want to be successful. 

We just have to find our heart again. 

We need to bring life back to schools that are barely hanging on right now.  We can’t expect for things to change overnight, and we can’t expect to find the one solution that will fix it all.  What we can do is start working little by little to show our students that we want what’s best for them, that we stand behind them, and most importantly, that we LOVE them.  We need to stop getting caught up in the technicalities, and the data, and the state requirements.  Those things are what are driving teachers to leave the profession.  Those things are what are keeping that revolving door turning. 

We need to start the heart beating again.  We need to nourish it, cherish it, and let it thrive, and through finding our heart again, everything else will just start to fall back into place.