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Miriam Kim is principal at Hollingworth Elementary School.
When I first heard about Ball a couple of years ago, I was skeptical that an organization like this could exist – an organization with no set agenda that really desired to work with us and not control us. I was a little bit wary of that.
But getting to know the Ball people has been phenomenal. They are real people – truly human. Not only are they smart, but they listen and they have such an ear to hear what you are saying.
They are not these suits with titles coming in and saying, “I have my 10 degrees. I’ve studied at these institutions. I have all this research behind my name. Blah, blah, blah.” They come with their being – who they are – and with the experiences that they’ve had. They don’t have an, “I’m better than you. I’m more knowledgeable than you,” attitude. Instead, it’s “I want to hear what you have to say because what you have to say is meaningful. It’s meaningful because you’re from Rowland. You know Rowland better than I do, but here’s something that I’ve experienced. I can share it with you, take it as you will. I’m not going to ram it down your throat.” They don’t start off with the “me” factor. It’s always first by listening, getting a feel for the room, a feel for the audience, knowing when to step in and talk, knowing when to pull back. I think that they are just wonderful at that. So, when I say that they’re human, they are easy to talk to, there are no airs about them. I think that’s why it makes them more approachable instead of just being known as the “Ball Foundation.” They are the people behind their names.
I think for me, a positive experience has been the fact that they’ve pushed my envelope to think differently, and to know that it’s okay to think that way. If you think about it, for me personally as an educator, I’ve been in the institution of education since I was four years old. You’re talking about preschool, then elementary school, then junior high, high school, college, straight into the teacher credentialing program, straight into student teaching, right into the classroom. So, I’ve never known anything beyond the four walls of what a school setting is like. Breaking out of those traditional molds is very difficult, and having a partnership with the Ball who helps you to think in a whole new way is frightening. But it also relieves you in a sense that it’s okay to not always do things in the same way.
Traditionally, schools have been run by a set of rules whether they’re for discipline or evaluation. There’s always been something that’s already written down that has been followed for decades and decades. When Ball came in, we had to let go of those rules. Especially now with the budget cuts that we’re facing, we have been forced to let go of what we know. We’ve had to completely restructure and look at our jobs as not just “principal – leader of the site,” or “teacher – in charge of the classroom.” Ball has brought in different ways for breaking us out of those roles. When I say “frightening,” it’s because that’s all we’ve known. We’ve always fallen back on those roles. We’ve always had a Director of Assessment and a Professional Resource Center. But now we don’t, so what are we going to do? We don’t quite know yet, but it’s going to be okay because we are all still loved here and we are all intelligent. We always go back to what’s best for the kids. So, we’ll find a way.
The experience with the budget cuts would have been different if Ball hadn’t allowed us to dialogue with each other, bringing in parties so that everybody understands that there is no preset map of the future. As a result, I think there’s more trust in this district. If we hadn’t worked with Ball during this process, we would possibly have gone back to the old ways – waiting for what’s going to happen from the district instead of taking charge first at the site level.
I think Ball’s transparency with the restructure process has been appreciated. Srik was just here last week at one of my staff meetings to talk about what we’re going through and the changes that are happening in the restructuring meetings. That brought a sense of relief to my teachers. I’m now also trying to strive for that same transparency with my staff by being very bold and upfront with them. I tell them that I don’t have all the answers and that I will need to rely on them to help us find the path for years to come. I think they have appreciated that, knowing that they really do have a hand in what’s going to happen to the school.
I’m just glad Ball found us.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Kimo Morris is a parent of a student at Blandford Elementary School; he is also a guest lecturer in science and history there.
My most memorable moment came during the strategic planning process – but let me first describe the situation and where I was coming from.
I was part of the strategic planning group for strategy two, which was one of the most challenging strategies. Most of the people in this group were administrators, principals, or teachers. I was one of the very few parents. Boy, it was tough because we were tasked with coming up with a statement that really defined a new direction for the district. The second strategy states, “We will transform teaching and learning to ensure the actualization of each student’s unique potential.” We had to make it learner-based to accommodate the unique potentials of all students. I didn’t come to the table with any real knowledge of the current state of education. Instead, I was coming to it from a parent’s perspective, and, actually, from a very defensive perspective initially.
Ever since my daughter was in kindergarten (she’s in 3rd grade now), I approached elementary education with skepticism. My view of the American education system had been shaped by what I was hearing in the media: “It’s only news if it’s bad news.” In addition to that, when I was in school, I was seen as one of those problem children because I couldn’t concentrate on what was going on around me for two reasons: 1) there were other things that I thought were absolutely fascinating and interesting that were not on the agenda for the day, and 2) I was seen as an underperformer because I was not conforming to what was happening all around me. Today, educators might look at a student like that and say, “What’s going on here? Family life seems to be perfectly fine. I wonder if maybe this child just needs to be stimulated in a different way.” That didn’t happen when I was in school in the mid 70s through the mid 80s. I was disciplined instead of encouraged for being interested in other things.
So, when I came to the strategic planning process, I really had a bitter taste for primary education, not knowing that things were different now. My perspective was, “I’m going to step in as a watchdog to make sure that this process is actually going to help things, and not just some fluffy, useless exercise.”
The entire time I was thinking about my daughter and her well-being, and thought that I was going to be the guy who actually shapes this and makes it useful. I quickly realized that not only was that not necessary, but that Rowland Unified School District has some of the most innovative and creative educators on earth. I was humbled and totally impressed, and changed my way of thinking very quickly during this process. This partnership with Ball, it’s revolutionary. I didn’t realize that education could be this good in America.
So, having said that, I was no longer the parent policeman in there. Instead, I began to contribute to the strategic planning group, and started opening up to everyone – exposing these teachers and administrators to my own personal feelings and perspective. It actually took me until closer to the end of the process to convey to these teachers and administrators the story that I have just told about my own educational experience – about how I was one of those students who fell through the cracks because it was not recognized early on that I had other talents that could be molded and nurtured.
So, the transformational moment for me as far as how I perceive Ball happened on one of the group’s Saturday get-togethers. Bob Hill came with Michael Palmisano, and I remember listening to them speak and thinking to myself, “It should be like that, like what they’re doing.” I was really impressed with their perspective on education.
One of the things we talked about was Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences concept with which I wasn’t familiar. It really clarified a few things for me as far as my relationship with my daughter. My daughter, it turns out, does not learn in the same way that I do. Where I would have been very frustrated trying to explain something to her in a way that made sense to me, I now had a much greater appreciation for why it was that she didn’t get it that way. I’m very analytical and she’s very musical. By teaching something to her through music, she was able to totally get it much more quickly. So understanding this revealed a really interesting difference between my daughter and me, and how we learn. That was neat. It was like one of those “aha” moments where it just turned it on for me, and I totally got it.
What I learned during the strategic planning process also changed my own teaching at the community college and university levels. I am a very visual learner, and so it was normal for my PowerPoint presentations to be very visual. But when I realized that the vast majority of human beings learn in a visual environment, I used less and less words on my presentations. Now I basically give a PowerPoint slideshow with 32 images and 30 words in the entire thing. I’m also going to use a lot more links to videos because it seems to be how the current generation of elementary through community college students are comfortable learning.
Overall, it comes back to me starting off with the paradigm of the policeman parent. I had this idea that teaching was a profession you went into when you didn’t have anything else to do. Boy, I’ve done a 180 on that, and now I really believe teachers are so underpaid for what they do. I can be inspirational with second graders for 45 minutes when I come in to do a special presentation, but if I had to be inspirational to kids six hours a day for the entire school year, I’d be pulling my hair out. I have a new found respect for how teachers think and how they do their craft, and my whole view of the potential of education in this country has been transformed for the better.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Josh Reger is a sixth grade teacher at Blandford Elementary School.
The most memorable experience I’ve had was when I got a chance to be part of the initial core team for the strategic plan. I’ve told the story often to people that being involved in that process and being somewhat sequestered for three days to really plan the direction of the district required some of the deepest thinking I’ve ever done. The Ball Foundation members got you to really think outside of your normal realm of thinking, and the questions they asked were exceptional. They would question everything you thought you knew, and make you think more deeply about what you really think about yourself, your peers, and your profession. It was interesting to work with them because I had never been in an environment where there was a real chance to grow something.
The great thing about The Ball Foundation is that their whole mission is to simply be the facilitators of the thinking. That’s one thing that Bob preached: Everything is already here, it’s just a matter of building the connections – and that’s the power of the whole process. That’s why we had teachers, administrators, and community members on the strategic planning team. This was really an organic grassroots movement with Ball acting as the guides.
The part of the strategic planning process that stood out the most to me was designing the mission statement. Ball made us question who we are as a district, where we want to go, and how we’re going to get there. I recall that coming up with the mission statement took a full day. We rewrote it and rehashed it, asking ourselves, “Is this word right? Does this make sense? Is this who we are? Is this where we want to go?” I left that day at 10 o’clock at night after getting there at 7:30 in the morning, just dead tired. But it was some of the deepest thinking that I’ve ever done, and it was memorable. When we were done with it, it was unbelievable. You sat back and looked at the statement and said, “Wow! We designed this. This is 100% from us. This is where we believe we are. There’s no other mission statement like this. This is exactly what we want to do.”
Going through this process has changed my teaching as well. I challenge myself now to think deeper, and I also challenge my students to do the same. I’ve tried to take more of a facilitator role in my classroom versus being a director or teller, and I think the kids appreciate that. Sometimes they don’t realize how much they know and they fall back into that thing of letting us tell them. If we give them the opportunity to speak their minds, there’s so much they know and can communicate. So now I sit back and ask them to think more deeply, and to tell me more about their thinking.
I’ve really been impressed by this experience, and by Ball’s commitment to education. I think they’ve brought a lot of great change to the district, and that they really opened up our eyes to a new way of thinking.
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
Kim Sandoval is a literacy coach at Rowland Elementary School.
The most powerful experience I’ve had with the Ball Foundation is when Sandra Janoff did a training on facilitation and taught us something called “percept” language. It really changed how I see myself and my thoughts about how I use language.
There are three steps to percept language: In the first step, you take notice of your reactions to people in different situations. In the second step, you reflect on what your reactions say about how you feel about certain parts of yourself. Then in the third and final step, you work through those feelings. So, on a deep level, if I think somebody is judgmental, there’s a piece of myself that I don’t like that’s judgmental. That’s why that part of that person really bothers me.
There’s actually a different way of phrasing things when using percept language. For example, if I say I’m bothered because I don’t think “Mrs. X” is a hard worker, I would say, “The Mrs. X part of me is annoyed with the lazy part of me.” The language can be really convoluted and complex – so you have to practice it – but it’s very powerful because it makes you own your thoughts.
During the training, we were all sitting in small groups in a circle practicing percept language with each other. At one point, we went around the whole circle and shared our experience using the language. Mine was about judgment or something annoying – I forget. But then I said, “So what does all this matter? What do words matter? If ultimately, everything we say is just about ourselves, what’s the point? Everything becomes so insignificant because if everything I tell you is really about me, and everything you tell me is about you, what’s the point of this?” Then one of the facilitators said to me, “Now try to say all that in percept language.” It was almost painful to do that because I had to say, “The percept part of me is saying, ‘I don’t matter to me.’” And I felt that. I thought, “Oh my gosh, this really feels awful. It feels so bad.” The power of negative thinking – even when you don’t feel its effects – when you bring it back to yourself, it’s so painful.
Sandra actually helped me work through and understand all of this. As she was helping me, the rest of the group watched Sandra and me have this conversation. At first, I was very self-conscious because there were 100 people in the room. But the whole experience allowed me to be myself. In my mind, I thought, “It doesn’t matter who’s here because this is how you’re going to learn.” I needed to live the message that you have to put yourself out there and take risks sometimes because I expect the teachers to do that all the time with me. So I thought I would do that in this group of learners and see what would happen.
It was a great experience, but it was also weird. I kind of went into tunnel vision where everybody receded to the background. I knew they were all there, but it didn’t matter. It was like Sandra and I were the only ones in the room as she supported me while I struggled to understand percept language. I felt so connected with her as somebody who knows so much and who gives a piece of herself to the learning process. It felt like when you’re teaching a lesson to kids and you really connect with them. There might be twenty other teachers watching you, but they all fade away, and you’re present with just the kids. It was like that with Sandra. She “saw” me there in the learning process and worked with me through all of it until I got it. It was almost like a revelation. It was such a powerful learning experience.
The experience changed how I look at things, how I look at myself, how I view the work. JoAnn and Carla from Ball talked about critical literacy. To me, that was an experience in how the use of language can alter the way I see the world. Even as I’m having this conversation with you, I’m making more meaning from it because I haven’t talked to a lot of people about it. But I would say that I experienced critical literacy learning through a conversation with an adult who gave of themselves in the same way. And just living my talk is what I think I did that day – in that moment of saying, “This is what learning is. You have to be a risk taker and go out of your comfort zone. Stretch yourself and realize that it’s okay. If it’s not right and you’re making a mistake, in the end you’ll get there with the support of someone else who’s giving of themselves.”
Word cloud created at wordle.net.
