#30DaysofLearning Day 17/18 - Common Language

I'm behind in my postings, so I'm going to post twice today.  This post will catch up on Thursday and Friday.  The following post will be my weekend update.  I think I have a good song to sign, so be sure to check out the next post once you've finished this one!

Day 17 was a Snow Day and a slow day.  I spent the day cold, fighting the desire to ignore the things that needed to be done while constantly staring out windows to see how much snow is falling and how the wind is whipping up the trees.  Schools were closed, so the day was spent mostly playing catch up on work that was backed up.

Friday was a much more active day.  It was COLD, but we were energized.  My team is reading Creating Cultures of Thinking by Ron Ritchhart together.  I am really enjoying sharing ideas about what we are reading.  We had a really intense conversation, and we were only talking about the first 2 chapters!

My biggest question that I want to share came out of our conversation about common language.  As a team, we are talking through what we mean when we use specific terms.  Our first piece of language that we tackled was the word "Learning".  On Friday, we turned our attention to the word "Success".  What does that mean to us?  How are we defining success in District 1?  And my question that will start to frame my conversations a bit moving forward was:

What does a graduate of any grade look like and sound like? 
​What do we expect this young person to be and be able to do when they graduate?

This is going to be an important conversation for our school leaders and teachers to have with their community.  And I believe that students and their families should be included in this conversation.  When families share their expectations that students should be, I imagine their answers will not include things like:

• "They should sound like an A/B/C."
• "They should look like a 95%."
• "They should be able to raise their hand to speak."
• "They should be able to sit in rows and take a 3 day examination that is the entire basis for their progress to the next level."

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I would expect what most parents will likely expect:

• They should be appropriately literate and numerate.
• They should be problem solvers working to improve the lives of themselves, their families, and their community.
• They should be curious and creative.
• They should know when to ask for help, and when to offer it.
• They should be comfortable taking the lead and following a strong leader.
• They should be able to work with others in meaningful ways.
• They should be citizens (talk about a word that could use some common language!).

What do you think a graduate should look like?