Learning from Everywhere - A Little Foo Magic

“Fuck Yeah!” You would expect a rock n roll star’s autobiography would have profanity, and it does. It has cigarettes and alcohol. It has a few tales of drugs. Hard to “just say no.” It has a rags to riches component with a humbled perspective. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, by Dave Grohl, reads as multiple vignettes of key points of Dave starting with Scream living out of a van and buying cheap cigs to moving on to Nirvana where he could lavish himself on Marlboros, then was almost with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers until finally living the dream of being the front man for the Foo Fighters.Dave’s mom was a hard working teacher. He starts the autobiography telling of him and mom playing instruments, singing at home and regularly attending a jazz workshop in Virginia on Sunday afternoons. For a birthday present, Mom asked Dave to go up on stage and play the drums with the great Lenny Robinson. This was Dave’s first time on stage ever!
These few pages are about courage, inspiration by failure, support, guided practice and love. Now I will “ruin” a great story about how this could be used with faculty to remind ourselves of experiences we can provide our kids. Pages 12 - 15 of The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music could be used with faculty to reflect on why we are here, in school, working with kids and searching for motivation, at times, to do what we are most passionate about - bringing meaning to what we learn and teach.
The cool thing about Dave’s life is his love and appreciation of teachers because of his mom. If you would like a lesson plan for a 25 minute activity with your faculty to read these pages, which may have a Nirvana/Foo Fighters connection with teachers, just contact me via LinkedIn or in Messenger - I’d be happy to share.


Best line in the book so far - “He’s gone, Dave.” When Dave was on the phone hearing about the first time he thought Kurt Cobain had died. I didn't know Kurt had died more than once.

Smile and look for Joy

 Guest Speakers can be awesome.  Last month, Harry Baker made a virtual visit to IICS as part of our Mother Tongue Week events.  As he was reciting one of his poems, the theme of communication was pervasive throughout with a focus on a SMILE.

The power of making a connection everyday as students dismount buses, stroll into class, climb and descend stairs or rapidly heading to the salad bar at lunch are opportunities that cannot be missed.  The smile, the wave, the head nod, the sharing of bad, but polite jokes makes connections.

I am loving my time at IICS working with grades 7 and 8.  I had not been in the classroom with grade 7 and 8 for 16 years now.  These students bring energy, curiosity and joy into the school on a daily basis.  They are still of the age when they figure something out, it translate into a physical expression of happiness with a fist pump or "yes" mumbled under the mask.

As part of the workshop with Harry Baker, we had time to wrote a poem.  Happy to share some alliteration below with you.

Smile

wrinkle of the dimple

crinkle of the edging eye

the upturned corners of the effervescent  smile

makes a soul feel wanted, acknowledged, accepted - alive

Where Do Student Values Come From?

 Values

We are looking at the school's Mission, Vision and Values here at Istanbul International Community School and I have been going into classes and collecting thoughts and ideas from students about who we are as a school.

By far, the one word students come up with is "kindness" as a value.  The school list we have thus far does not include kindness - yet.  Part of the discussion revolved around where do we get our values.  The normal list appears: family, friends and school.  One other source pops in there at number two when I asked students to rank them, social media/influencers.

Couple of things jump out at me.  What do we do in school to address social media? - this is a general comment.  Specifically, what do we do at school to raise the issues associated with social media and influencers like Mr. Beast, Khaby Lame or Zach King.  This is a male list of influencers who focus on fun and bringing humor.  A female list of influencers include Kylie Jenner,

Addison Rae and Huda Kattan.  Female topics include personal beauty, exercise, motivation and socialite status.

As a school, how much do we address these topics in class where it matters? Like in Social Studies and English.  Is there a better way to embed these issues into current world happenings?  Often folks just go to CNN or the BBC, but not Al-Jezeera or RT.  For world events, you can just go to Twitter and see what people are posting.  How do we know what is real, doctored or just lies?  The influence of  media has always been there going back to the days of Walter Cronkite, now we are on our own and have to navigate the field that is full of cow patties.  Unknowingly, cow patties just came out when thinking of Social Media.

Re-Energizing an Organization During COVID Times

Here are some ideas leaders/Principals can keep the school/organization moving during the time of COVID and remote working.

Keep the Leadership Team Focused - Yes, there will be meetings and talking of schedules, wellness of faculty/students and then circumstances change and you have to go back to the start, but focus on the wellness of the leadership team. What is the leadership team doing to take care of themselves? Put time aside in the leadership meeting to celebrate what is happening in the classroom or in Virtual School or tell a funny story once in a while.

Encourage Flexible Work Time - Each person has their own groove, when someone finds it, encourage the groove. Some employees love to come to school and use their classroom as home base, others enjoy the comfort of their own home. Many teachers are using the hybrid model of half at school and then half the time at home. Acknowledge and encourage what works best for the teacher. No point forcing everyone to work from school if there are no students there.

Focus on Mental Health - With longer periods of isolation or intimate friendship circles temporarily shrinking, thinking about emotional and mental well-being is a priority. If adults are not able to take care of themselves, how would they be able to take care of the needs of others? The Principal who is the “boss” but is also a friend just takes steps to listen to teachers, find out what their needs are, listen to complaints/concerns and just be there as a sounding board. Acknowledge the feelings teachers have and commiserate when needed but also be ready to say that “I don’t have the answer - yet”. Most of the time, problems are solved by listening and your talking partner is able to work through their emotions/trepidations after expressing their thoughts verbally.

Overcoming Pandemic Fatigue

5 Minute Chats with the Principal

Mental Health Part Deux

This is the Second part of Mental Health for Expats and their Families. This information comes from the Truman Group via a NESA Webinar.

Overall, expats experience anxiety, depression which can lead to adults being combustible at times, overreacting to small situations. This combustibility is related to our anxiety. There is more substance abuse in the expat community versus staying in our native country and there are the changes in family situations when arriving in a new country that is challenging. Part of this is due to the lack of mental health resources in the numerous countries we live in.

In looking at the parent perspective of challenges during COVID times, this can have an effect on our children. A recent study in June 2020 out of the US which sampled 5400 young adults (18-24) indicated 41% felt adverse mental health concerns, 33% self-reported anxiety/depression, 10% reported an increase in substance abuse and another 10% considered suicide.

In being a parent, our emotional experience affects our children and our child’s emotional experience will affect us. Over the last number of years, there has been a rise in anxiety and depression amongst young people. Some of the contributing factors include:

• Pressure from families about getting into good universities/colleges (My comment is there is a university/college for everyone.)
• Changes in family structures over the years and different parenting styles.
• Technology and its effects on peer interactions. In the classroom students can see others struggling on a test or a topic but in the social media world, others are presented as flawless with perfect images and pictures of friends. Social media can give a false image of reality.

Some anxiety can be good as it raises our heart and respiration rates and makes us more acute to what is happening around us. There are ways to combat bad anxiety. We can change what we do and feel and we can learn how to respond to situations in a better way. As a parent we are role models for our children. Ask ourselves, are we able to keep calm in stressful situations? When our children see us react in a stressful situation, this is the message we are sending about how to react in these situations.

We can test ourselves as parents by thinking about when we may have overreacted at times. Was there ever a time plate was dropped and smashed on the floor. One parent may say “OK, let’s clean up.” Another may raise their voice and instill consequences right away. Think of a time you might have overreacted, what was happening in your life at that time? This could give you a way of identifying a time you felt anxiety or stress. When we are able to identify anxiety or stress, we are better able to address it.


Some tips for relieving stress in you that will help how we interact with our children and these tips work with our children as well.

• Exercise - get the heart rate going - we feel great afterwards!
• Set Short Terms goal for what needs to be done
• Tech time versus sleep time. Technology brings sleep disruption to us and our children. Keep the phones away from beds. Plug them in somewhere else.

If you have a child with anxiety support can include:

• Demand, but not too much, try to find the sweet spot
• Keep kids engaged.
• Reframe thinking in a way that tones down the situation.
• Interpret your child’s experience in a way for them to take control of the situation.

Since COVID times hit there is more anxiety but we are resilient, children are even more resilient. We will be fine.

Mental Health of Youth

When I first started in a leadership position 11 years ago at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, I had the role of Assistant Principal/IB Coordinator. In working with HS students in this capacity I was astonished at the number of students, boys and girls, who suffered from anxiety, depression, suicide and suicidal ideations. As the years have passed the numbers seemed to have increased based upon my own recollections but after viewing a NESA (Near East Schools Association) Parent Webinar my thoughts were confirmed.

Sean Truman of Truman Group hosted this parent webinar and empirical evidence presented indicates more young people struggle with mental health issues now than 10 years ago. A US Data Sample in June 2020 surveyed 5400 young Americans. 41% reported adverse Mental Health concerns, 33% self reported anxiety/depression, 10% reported increased substance abuse and 10% reported considering suicide.

This is COVID times data and it is up from the previous year where an average of 7% self reported anxiety/depression in 2019 and suicidal ideation was reported at about 5%. COVID times it taking its toll.

Other data from the CDC (2019) which tracked suicide rates between 2007-2017 indicated that suicide of youth between 10-24 years increase 56% and suicide in youth aged 10-14 increased threefold.

Kind of depressing stuff for an initial blog but something I want to understand better to improve my craft as an educator. In the next blog I’ll address some more of these issues and what parents can do to help.