This month at Onward, we are tapping into the habit, Focus on the Bright Spots. This time a year is a perfect time to slow down and look for the light. In the learning spaces that I facilitate, I often stress the need to focus on the bright spots, but how do you go about finding those bright spots?
I have been following Joe Truss and his culturally responsive leadership focus on Twitter @trussleadership. He frequently shares about life as a principal and the work that he does around culturally responsive leadership. I enjoyed this blog he wrote about how school transformation starts with bright spots. I especially love how he talks about demystifying the magic:
There’s a teacher who is already doing the thing you want your entire school to be doing.
Go there, see it.
Tell others about it.
Demystify the magic into tangible moves.
- Is it the unit planning?
- Is it their warm demander stance?
- Is it consistency? Is it humor?
- Is it their choice of culturally relevant, high interest low Lexile novels?
- Is it their connection with your school’s community?
- Is it how they open their class with students reading and analyzing the learning objective?
- Is it their special individual handshakes as kids enter the classroom?
What is it? Once you know, give them some love and share it with other teachers. Or better yet, bring people to their classroom or have them lead PD on how to do that thing they are so good at.
Imagine if this was the kind of leadership at your school or your children’s school. Imagine the kind of culture that would be present. Commit to focusing on the bright spots all month and notice the shifts that happen!