KNOW THY IMPACT? YES, IN THE SMALL THINGS THAT LIFT US UP!

Know thy Impact. That's our adopted theme for the new school year, where I teach.  Our focus is on data. and making sound decisions around instructional practices based on data we regularly review and discuss in our professional learning communities. While, I'm not always entirely enthused about the amount of data that's been made available to me about my students, I give the leadership in my building credit for not telling us exactly what data we must discuss or how we must discuss it, but instead giving us room to make those important decisions ourselves.

Frankly, that's made the journey easier and honestly, I feel like my co- teacher and I have had some great discussions about teaching and learning using data to help us become more focused on work students really need to be engaged in to improve their reading and writing. We are making better progress mastering standards. Data has been a helpful guide. In fact, 83% of our 157 students showed solid growth on our first unit of study, working to master standards 1, 2, and 4 I'm proud of that. I'm proud of them!

But I wonder, does data have to deeply govern ALL of the decisions we make about teaching and learning? Are there times when growth can be witnessed outside the numbers? And can we still be allowed to make great choices about what kinds of things we know deep in our teaching hearts will impact students without using data to prove it? Where is the balance? 

Recently, We've been gifted with an excellent opportunity to bring in an incredible professional author and story teller for a day of learning that we are confident will have great impact on our students as they work on saying out loud what they are learning about the past and how it impacts their future. Research suggests when students can teach someone else they are getting closer to mastery, so per our own goals for helping students read and write better- we are also committed to helping students learn to say it out loud and teach each other through the lens of story telling.

You should have seen many of them perform their stories last week about progressive personalities, first for themselves and later at our Night at the Museum event... we were so proud! It's worthy work and we believe it's making a big impact as students research and write and learn to say what they have learned. But we can't prove it. And because we can't prove it we're having a hard time getting the kind of support required for the day of learning that we want to provide for our students with this high quality professional.

So, we're  being encouraged and allowed to pursue the event- but in a way that we fear diminish the contributions offered to a true professional. That won't stop us, and we'll be wise about trying to find a way to quantify his impact so that we leave the door open to future collaborations. We know we must persevere in the work because of the impact we have already seen- the confidence and skill students develop as they learn to share their learning out loud for others.

 Our students deserve these kind of experiences whenever we can provide them. And as teachers we shouldn't have to prove impact in ALL things with numbers. It kind of sucks the joy out of this part of the journey- ya know? When we should be celebrating, we are left wrestling with ways to make great work and experiences happen... so we become conditioned to wrestle- because we know we must to make impact happen.

As a big Cubs fan, this has been a special kind of year! As a baseball lover I'm aware of a statistic used in baseball these days used to measure the impact a given baseball player has on his team's success called W.A.R. or wins above replacement. If a player is a 5 W.A.R. player it means he will help his team win five more games during that given season. I worry that education is heading that way as well- in order to get support for events and experiences that we know will impact students will we first have to prove that they are worth the resources using data as our evidence? Seems so.

And that's left us in a quandary... and feeling down and unsupported. But we keep trudging forward working to make it happen against the grain of expectations and quantification because our teacher hearts demand it. It's what we stronghold... a certain stubbornness.

In the meantime we are reminded that impact can be measured in other ways too. Small and powerful things that lift us up. We've witnessed students take great risks to perform a bit of a story in front of supportive peers. We've watched parents interact with young story tellers and seen the joy and pride in their eyes. as students memorize a piece they've written and work on using gestures as they make eye contact and get beyond the traditional "just read it off the page", pride and confidence grow in them and our teacher hearts swell as we watch this growth take place. It's these little things that are of great worth to us- and to our students. They lift us up! And we celebrate them... excited for where we know they will they take students as they journey to master more than just standards.

There is impact here- and we don't need numbers to prove it!