Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving Day

It is a very difficult year in America. We continue to struggle with the COVID-19 Pandemic. Many families do not have sufficient food supplies and cannot pay their bills. Some do not have jobs or have lost significant income. And still others are depressed and cannot meet their own needs and the needs of family members. Then millions of America’s students are forced to learn remotely with closed schools. Millions suffer from racism. Millions also have been forced to evacuate or lost their homes to extreme weather from climate change.

As we approach another Thanksgiving holiday, we must consider how we can safely celebrate the day with our family and friends. As a senior citizen, I will continue to social distance from all five grandkids and our extended family.

Summarized below are some things, I continue to be thankful for:

Healthy living and being able to give back to my family and friends
A spiritual connection with nature and the community
The love and support of family, friends, students, and community members
A commitment to hiking, exercising, and achieving a balanced life
Participation in various creative activities including writing, watercolor artwork, and crafting

As you prepare for your Thanksgiving event, you may want to encourage your children to list their thankful thoughts. Some families create a family tree structure and cut out leaf tracings on colored construction paper. Your children and family members can write a thankful thought on each cut leaf and then stick or hang the leaf on the tree structure.

Much serenity as you share your grateful thoughts with each other this holiday season.

Hugs,

Mary Ann

Navigating Politics with Middle Schoolers

A three-part reflection series on parenting middle schoolers during the pandemic on the home front, facing political realities with pre-teens, and practical considerations regarding school re-opening.

“Mama, Mr. Williams (the Principal) is totally unfair! For the Boys’ Junior Varsity and Varsity Basketball teams, he always announces their scores the next day during morning announcements and says ‘Good job,’ or ‘Great effort,’ or ‘Congrats on the win.” But when it was the Girls’ Basketball season, he didn’t say anything during announcements! Why is it like this?!” exclaimed my upset 7^th grade daughter in January 2020.

As the rest of 2020 unfolded, it seemed there was no escaping politics – gender equality, COVID-19, racial injustice, the Presidential election and its aftermath – it’s all accessible as soon as kids turn on the tv, listen to the radio, or log-on to the computer for classes. Innocuous as it may have seemed, that incident regarding basketball announcements was my daughter’s introduction into politics. The notion that her team received unfair treatment – that the Principal treated the boys’ team differently from the girls’ team – made my daughter question how the decision was made to include boys but exclude girls. Yup! That’s politics! So how do we navigate politics in a way that is appropriate and responsible with our pre-teens?

Talk Openly About Issues

In our home, we do not hide news or current events from our kids. We keep conversations open to all topics so they know they can approach us and talk with us about any and all concerns, whether global (like in the news) or personal (like incidences at school). If there is a policy that needs explanation, we talk about the background of the issue, how decisions made by public officials affect the community, and why it is important to vote. We encourage fact-finding and self-reflecting questions to keep conversations open and unbiased. In the case of the basketball announcements, we asked her a wide range of questions for her consideration, including:

Policy – Is there a policy about morning announcements? Who gets to make them?
Self – Is it possible that the boys’ team won more games that the girls’ team, and that your feelings are getting in the way of being objective?
Other – How do you know the Principal plays favorites? Is there a history and pattern of the Principal favoring boys in other contexts?

While these questions are specific to the situation she personally experienced, we hope that this mode of thinking will be applied to other global issues as she grows, matures, and is eligible to vote.

Explore Solutions Together

Even as middle schoolers, adolescents are more than capable of being change makers in their context. They can be skillful with finding solutions to meet their challenges. Because she was not satisfied with the way things were, my daughter and I discussed the situation together. After a brief but fruitful conversation, we agreed upon the following:

The Principal is generally fair and that the issue with the basketball announcements was an isolated case.
It hurts to swallow your pride and accept that your season wasn’t a winning one, but a little acknowledgement and encouragement from the Principal could go a long way.
She didn’t know enough about policies for morning announcements, but it seemed like representation was key for the boy’s basketball mention – a member of the boy’s basketball team was also a member of the student leadership team who made the announcements.

As a result of this discussion, my daughter suggested that as team captain, she needed to represent her team.

Encourage Responsible Action

So what does it look like for middle schoolers to take action and get involved in a responsible and respectful way? We took these steps:

My daughter decided that representing the team as captain meant she had to speak up and advocate for fair treatment.
In her letter, she stated out the observed discrepancy in the treatment of boys versus girls.
Knowing that her objective was to be constructive, she also suggested a possible solution – working with the Coach, one of the girls’ basketball team members could write a quick summary of the basketball game and submit it to the student leadership team for announcements the next day.
She decided that she would write a letter to the principal on behalf of her teammates. She took a draft of the letter to each of the girls to get consensus on the content of the letter and asked them to sign it as well.
When the Principal didn’t reply to her letter, she followed up with an email and asked if he had time to consider her request. Her letter was well received and he agreed that her suggestion should be implemented the next season.

While my daughter might not be ready to jump into national politics just yet, her first experience with influencing decisions and outcomes for herself and on behalf of others was very empowering! Knowing that she can make a difference in her personal and local context will help her realize that she is a positive change agent.

Let’s raise leaders who make a difference!

Jaime

Jaime Koo, Mama Best Friend (MBF)

The first of a three-part reflection series on parenting middle schoolers during the pandemic on the home front, facing political realities with pre-teens, and practical considerations regarding school re-opening.

Most people are bashful when it comes to tooting their own horn, but Friends, I am really proud of this recent acknowledgement – I’ve recently been conferred with the honorary title MBF, otherwise known as “Mama Best Friend.” You see, this designation comes from the notoriously difficult, the most critical and defiant, the extremely hard-to-please individual – yes, that’s right, my 13-year-old daughter. It has taken me a lot of hard work in these 13 years to earn the title, and to be granted this distinction during the COVID-19 pandemic is both extraordinarily humbling and extremely gratifying.

What did I do to receive such an honor, you ask? Well, we’ve come a long way, my daughter and I. Allow me to provide some examples: When trying to maintain discipline and order when she was a toddler, she would commonly shriek “I hate you” or scream “You don’t love me anymore!” Once, when she was 8 years old, she got so angry that she impulsively opened the front door and ran down the street. When she was about 10 years old, I was driving my daughters to a doctor’s appointment and so did not pay attention to her demands. All of a sudden, she got enraged and started repeatedly kicking the back of my driver seat, all the while screaming “Why aren’t you listening to me?”

I share these incidences with you, dear Reader, because these nightmarish parenting situations might be something you can relate to. Parenting isn’t perfect and certainly; I am not a perfect parent. While I believe that parents have the responsibility to establish discipline in the parent-child relationship, I also believe it is the parent’s job to initiate and model a respectful relationship with our kids. Each one of these episodes caused me to reflect on my own actions that might have contributed to the problem. Here are a few strategies I employed to build a healthy parent-child relationship with my daughter.

I communicated my love to her in her preferred love language.

One pivotal incident between my daughter and I was when we were having a heated discussion about an incident. I was coming from the perspective of how she could improve her situation when all of a sudden, a deflated, tearful 11-year-old said, “Why can’t you just comfort me and tell me that everything will be ok? Can you just give me a hug?” From that moment, I realized that I was trying to show my care for her by finding solutions. However, what she really needed from me was words of affirmation and physical affection. I quickly learned about the Five Love Languages and began to consistently communicate my love to her in her preferred love languages.

I became an ardent student of who she is and celebrated her.

I showed sincere interest in the things she liked and learned as much as I could about it. I let her be the expert in these areas and asked her to teach me all about her current fascination. If she liked K-Pop songs, we would listen to them in the car together. Even though it was trivial to me, I also learned all the different types of Pokémon (especially her favorite), their power level, and the different stages of Pokémon evolutions. When she was interested in basketball, I signed her up to play in local competitive leagues and took her to watch local college women’s basketball games.

I invested time to listen to her.

From my perspective, some things that interested my daughter were superficial and insignificant. However, I realized that if I actively listened to her and she could trust me with what I regarded as “small things,” one of these days, she would also trust me with the “big things.” Of course, the pandemic hit at the end of her 7^th grade year and is now affecting her 8^th grade year – a milestone year. We have since had many “big” conversations about how this pandemic will affect her end-of-the-year activities, her participation in the competitive basketball league, how she will connect with her friends, and the implications distance learning will have for her high school and college ambitions. You never know when chit-chat in the car or small talk around the dinner table will evolve into valuable connections with your kids!

And so, Friends, parenting middle schoolers is difficult, and parenting during this pandemic is especially challenging. However, it is precisely because we are parenting during the pandemic that we need to slow down and pay attention to our children’s needs, whether those needs be physical, mental, academic, emotional, or spiritual. It hasn’t always been an easy journey and there’s no telling what the high school years will bring, but my relationship with my daughter is valuable to me and the effort is worth it.

Wishing you well on the parenting journey,

Jaime Koo, MBF

Online Social Activities for Teens

Students returned to school remotely in August. Since their return, our primary focus has been to ensure that all of our students are socially and emotionally ready to learn each day. Our elected student leaders meet afterschool to create creatively engaging activities for students throughout the school year.

Fun Weekly Activities

Our high school has offered wacky and fun weekly activities that include the following:

Mindful Mondays provide a focus on self-care with calming techniques and activities.
Shout Out Wednesdays highlight successes and achievements of teachers and students.
Throwback Thursdays showcases students’ favorite baby pictures.
Kahoot! Scavenger hunts include having students determine which teacher participated in a specific activity. For example, one school leader used to hop on trains when she was a kid with her brothers. Another was a passenger in a performance race at the Laguna Seca Raceway.
The K-pop Fan Club is offered at noon on Wednesdays to learn about K-pop fandom, groups, soloists, and various music genres.
The exercise club ensures students maintain a balanced physical fitness program.
The 2020 senior year boot camp ensures students are prepared for college and career options.
Art classes are provided through a career technology pathway. Participating students can also test and receive a completion pathway certificate from Mission College.
Spirit week was offered in early September. It included Mindful Monday. Binge Week Wednesday highlighted images of students’ favorite binge watched shows. TikTok Thursday showed students’ videos of their best trickshot, magic trick, or dance move. Flashback Friday displayed students’ favorite childhood photos.

These diverse activities build the school’s student engagement culture and provide the system of care that ensures success for all of our students.

Much success as you support your children’s school communities!

Yvette

Engaging Our Children in Daily Assignment Assessments

As many students begin their school year in a remote classroom, teachers and parents can help their children understand their learning intentions and identify effective assessment strategies for demonstrating learning. Assessment definitions typically include these key ideas:

Measures the outcomes of teaching and learning
Gathers and uses information about students’ knowledge and skills
Relies on empirical data

A More Comprehensive Definition

An assessment also relies on gathering, analyzing, and using evidence and information from multiple sources about learning outcomes in ways that best support students, inform instruction, make educational decisions, and improve learning outcomes. It is most effective when it benefits both the giver and receiver. What if there was a way to document a “return on assessment?” This chart describes what happens when students are engaged IN the process of assessment as compared to the benefits when they are empowered AS assessors.

Engaging and Empowering Learners

ENGAGING LEARNERS IN ASSESSMENT	EMPOWERING LEARNERS AS ASSESSORS
TEACHERS ROLE Reconsider the use of quizzes, tests, and other traditional “measures” of learning: Alternatively, rely on practices that involve students in the process and practices of assessment. i.e., They write the questions.	STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES Rely on the best practices and research on student-engaged assessments that develop learners’ confidence, readiness to be assessed, and outcomes of learning.
Share explicit learning intentions that students deconstruct into actionable and attainable learning processes and outcomes. i.e., How can you use this?	Explain their goals, their learning intentions, and how they developed a personalized plan and process.
Offer a practical and predictable path for learning. Anticipate the need for flexibility and support. i.e., Incorporate a “Learning Tracker.” (Italics indicate links)	Describe the path they planned and followed, what went as expected, and times that they needed to be flexible, backtrack, or take detours.
Incorporate progress and growth indicators such as checklists and rubrics for students to check as they monitor progress along the path of learning.	Routinely display descriptions and documentation of their progress as well as areas for improvement.
Display exemplars of varying levels of achievement of goals: Have students compare and evaluate the exemplars.	Present explicit evidence of learning and describe how their outcomes aligned or deviated from the learning intentions and plan.
Provide goal-based and actionable feedback that describes ways to resolve misunderstandings as well as close lingering learning gaps.	To improve their learning, students review and explain their use of feedback that is timely, relevant actionable, and user-friendly.
Involve students in assessing their foundational skills and knowledge, how they will monitor progress, and feasibly evaluate the outcomes. i.e. i.e. assess pre/post	Students present and explain where their learning started, the steps they took, and how the quality of their final outcomes.

Much success as you help your children learn how to self-assess their many online assignments.

Laura