One of Life’s Tough Lessons: We Do Make a Difference
By Susan Fitzell, February 15, 2000

I have something to share tonight… not sure why, except that I need to…

I went to a concert at my son’s school. There was a resident artist there, a musician, Randy Armstrong, that I have been following since my college days. Wow, that’s over 20 years.

It was a wonderful concert and to see the spark that Randy ignited in my son by inspiring a passion for the African drum was a wonderful thing.

But, the night was bitter sweet.

Well over a year ago, the principal at my children’s school, Mr. F. had a sudden aneurysm and stroke. He is probably in his early 50’s. He had all kinds of complications that didn’t allow him to recover, as we would have hoped.

He was a man who lived his life for his school. He had been the principal there for at least twenty years. I was fortunate enough to get to know him when he allowed me to do my conflict resolution practicum in his school. To my daughter, he was an extremely special man. My son, although he only knew him for a little over a year in school, had tottered around the building from the time he was two. He also, knew the principal well.

I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, however, I had a very hard time accepting that this charismatic man, this man who had given his life for the community’s children, this man who would bend over backward to help me, my children, and set such a strong positive role model for generations of children would be dealt such a blow.

I know it is not my place to question why things happen the way they do. Even if I do question, there are no answers. All I can think of is the loss that everyone who loves him feels and the loss for all the children who won’t know this great man the way he was.

He came to the show tonight. As he entered on his walker, he looked frail. The entire auditorium rose and cheered and let out whoops of happiness to see him. I did to. But, then I cried. I’m not sure all that I’m crying for, but the tears flow nevertheless.

My daughter wanted to see him after the show. She was his shining star. She knew that. She was warned that he might not remember her name, but, in her young mind, her hope was that he would. She thought, “How could he forget her?”

I went with her. I’m grateful that I was there to support her. As she met him, he looked at her like he knew her, but kept saying, “I can’t remember your name.” He looked at me, and I saw recognition in his eyes, but pain. I told him who we were and he started to cry. He said, “I can’t remember names. This stroke did this. It’s so frustrating, I can’t remember names.” I hugged him, and said it was OK. But, I knew, to him, it wasn’t. One of the things he prided himself in all his years as principal was that he knew every name of every child in the school.

My daughter and I came home. We had a bedroom talk about life, fairness, expectations, letting go, life lessons and harsh realities. And, we cried. I tried to tell her that the past has not changed. She still holds it in her heart and her mind. And the future is just different. Maybe there is a lesson for us to learn here, too.

I am a teacher. He, a principal, was also a teacher. In a different way, he still is one. So many times in life, we wonder what we give to our students, our families, our children, and the world. So many times we question the value of our own lives or our own contribution. Maybe it is not ours to question. Only those who experience life with us, whose lives we have touched and whose lives have touched ours, can really know what it is that we give. Could he have really known how much he was loved? How much he gave to the children in his building? I doubt it.

He is still touching my life. His experience has made me look at life differently. I guess facing your own mortality does that.

People constantly tell me to rest, to slow down, that I will die young if I keep the pace that I keep. Well, there are two ways to look at life. One way is to go though life more relaxed attempting to preserve my health and savor the moments. The other is to live every moment with as much gusto as I can because I can’t foresee the future. My life as I know it could change tomorrow. So, I want to experience everything that I can and give as much as I can to the world now, while I can.

Another thing he is teaching me is that as teachers, principals, peacemakers, humans contributing to the world, even when we think our contribution is minimal, that our efforts are in vain, that our voices are not heard, someone we have touched has learned from what we have given, has grown from our efforts, and has heard our words. We just seldom know it.

My daughter told me of her first memory with Mr. F. It was a simple moment of teasing over a troll she had in show and tell. I’m sure he walked away that day and thought no more of it. But, 7 years later, she still remembers it. To her, it meant he noticed her, that he cared for her, that he liked her. At that time, *that* was important to her.

We touch lives. Even the mistakes we make in our lives are opportunities for ourselves and others to grow. We touch lives for good or for bad. Sometimes it is the smallest of acts that is remembered. For me, tonight was a powerful reminder of that simple truth because this man has touched my life more than he could ever know.

Recently, I’ve referenced “The Nun Study” in my seminars when discussing the importance of challenging our brains to grow neural connections. Many have not heard of this study. So, in order to facilitate further discussion and learning on the topic, I’m posting some links here.

The Nun Study at the University of Minnesota where the research is headquartered.

Time magazine wrote an excellent article on The Nun Study in 2001. A quote from that article “…a college education and an active intellectual life, on the other hand, may actually protect you from the effects of the disease. Perhaps the most surprising result of the Nun Study, though, is the discovery that the way we express ourselves in language, even at an early age, can foretell how long we’ll live and how vulnerable we’ll be to Alzheimer’s decades down the line.”

The University of Kentucky also published an outstanding article on the topic of Aging and Alzheimer’s.

I read this article and remember how sharp my dad was at 78 years old. He did a crossword puzzle every day, spoke two languages fluently and was an avid reader. He was sharp until the day he passed over.

Seems to me that it’s a gift to our students to teach them to love reading, writing and on-going learning.

There are too many factors involved in learning and too many ways of approaching the question of how learning happens to think that any one theory can answer those questions definitively. But one person whose work has proven really fruitful for me is psychologist Howard Gardner, who has distinguished eight or nine distinct types of intelligence (he’s still adding to his list), each of which benefits from different approaches to learning and communication in the classroom. Gardner’s types have proved tremendously helpful to my own work developing teaching strategies for working with the special needs of all children in the classroom (e.g., Special Needs in the General Classroom: Strategies that Make it Work, 2nd edition. 2010).

The two most familiar types of intelligence–the linguistic learner and the logical-mathematical learner–fit in well with our dominant models of teaching and recognizing achievement. The odds are good that many teachers, themselves, are examples of these types of intelligence.

On the other hand, some of the other intelligence types may be familiar primarily as classroom problems. There are the “bodily kinesthetic” learners who are physically hyper-active and potentially disruptive; the spatial thinkers who are likely to sit and daydream; the musical kids who are continually humming or drumming; the interpersonal learners who may be chatterboxes; the introverted intrapersonal ones who keep to themselves; the naturalists who are more tuned into the world outside the classroom than to what’s on the board or in the book; or the existentialist, who is inclined to ask annoyingly fundamental questions that have no place in the world of the three R’s, questions like “For what purpose are we here?” or “How do we fit into the world?”

As long as classroom instruction is primarily geared to reach only one or two of these different intelligences, a lot of kids will struggle to process the information being offered them and experience a serious disadvantage in achieving success.

Fortunately, though each person may have a dominant style, most of us actually possess some combination of these intelligences and the learning preferences that go with them. A lesson or project geared toward one learning style is not going to be inaccessible or unhelpful to the rest of the classroom. In fact, by including different kinds of lessons for different kinds of intelligences, teachers will be helping all students develop their multiple potentials, while making sure that no one falls behind or gets lost because they don’t learn well from one type of teaching.

This offers great opportunities for the development of new and varied teaching techniques. For each type of intelligence and learning, there is a corresponding new type of teaching.

We spent the day discussing teaching strategies and ways to involve all learners in the classroom. At the end of the full day session, Dr. Twomey got up and endorsed the ideas I had spoken about.  He expressed his desire to see the strategies that we covered actually being implemented in the classroom and was so passionate about that desire that he offered an incentive to his staff.  He asked that teachers nominate each other and identify who they saw actually using strategies to differentiate instruction in their classrooms. He promised that he would have periodic drawings  to recognize and reward those teachers for implementing strategies learned in the session.

I  learned late last week that Dr. Twomey had just awarded a FREE day off to each of three outstanding teachers (one from each district campus).  I’m not talking about extra prep time, or a sick day.  This administrator awarded each of these outstanding teachers a day off, with pay, and no strings attached!

So often administrators fail to follow through, or simply don’t know how to support their teachers, or motivate them to be the best teachers that they can be.   I could not pass up the opportunity to recognize Dr. Twomey and the tenacious support he offers his teachers and, in turn, the students of Havana School District 126.

Congratulations to Wendy Saylor, Music Teacher at New Central Elementary, Janet Barker, 5th Grade Teacher at Havana Middle School, and Barb Ramsey, Chemistry Teacher at Havana High School for their hard work and dedication to good teaching!

Too many classrooms still rely solely on verbal linguistic teaching methods — lectures and verbal instructions delivered by one person standing in front of a roomful of more or less attentive children. Many kids can and will learn  in this type of classroom, but too many others will lose their joy of learning and start to dread going to school.

Differentiated instruction involves a flexible, dynamic, and interactive teaching model that doesn’t expect all children to learn the same way, at the same pace, with cookie-cutter results. Students learn the same content and standards based curricula, but the path to learning is much more varied and responsive to the different learning styles and levels of the students in the classroom. Students who learn best through words or who think in more logical-mathematical ways, or those who respond to visual cues as well as the more physically and mechanically gifted students can all be engaged effectively in learning when we differentiate instruction. We reach the listeners, the talkers, and the introspective thinkers.

Once the basic concepts are understood, though, there are many simple and effective techniques for implementing differentiated instruction in the classroom. Introducing pictures and images, movement-based exercises, cooperative projects, and color-coded instruction aids are four teaching strategies that target the special needs of diverse learning styles, while still benefiting all the students in the classroom.

In the weeks to come, I hope to talk some more about the background issues and practical methods I have explored in depth in the second edition of my book, “Special Needs in the General Classroom: Strategies that Make it Work  2nd Edition (2010).”*

Though it may be challenging at first for teachers to learn these new strategies, differentiated instruction has the potential to bring much greater satisfaction, and fun, back into the classroom for the teacher who embraces it as well as the children who will benefit from it.

Jan teaches GED courses for adults at a local community college. In her first class after attending the seminar, she was planning on starting a new unit on Social Studies. “One of the things I’m hoping to start right away is to have the students work together to create some of their own mnemonic techniques,” she told me. Laughing, she commented that “I think [the students] are going to enjoy that more than always listening to me!”

Most of the time, when we consider techniques and strategies for the classroom, we think in terms of elementary, middle, and high school. But these strategies can be used anywhere learning takes place, including at the college level – and even in the corporate world, where “students” go through workplace training and continuing education.

I’m thankful for my family. They are not only all that a mom and wife could hope for, they all get along well. I am so incredibly grateful for that. Mike, Shivahn, and Ian, you are my lifeblood, lifeline and my ever so patient cheering squad and support.

I’m grateful for the relationship my mom and I have today.

I’m thankful for the mentors; some are friends, some colleagues, some former supervisors, who helped me to grow to who I am today. Some of the hardest truths and difficult lessons in my life brought me to where I am today. I still have a long way to go, and I’m grateful for where I am.

I’m thankful for the teachers who come to my seminars and workshops with a sincere desire to grow. I’m thankful for the teachers who don’t want to be there at 8:00 a.m. and by 3:00 are telling me they are so glad that they came. I’m thankful for the teachers who find typos in my books and are brave enough to tell me so that I know to fix them in the next edition. I’m grateful for the clients that push me to new heights with their requests for customization that force me to research new pedagogy.

I’m thankful for my friends who understand that I travel with work yet manage to remember me in the chance that I might be home and would like to visit.

I’m thankful that I have Wah Lum Kung Fu (and my kung fu family) to keep me limber and mentally challenged and for Dave Mulcahey who challenges me with kettle bells and core exercise to keep my aging body strong. I’m thankful for my health.

I’m thankful for sunshine, lilacs, cheesecake, Jeni’s gelato (Columbus, OH), Kentucky Bourbon Chocolate Cherries (and the work that allows me to find such delicacies), hibiscus, butterfly bushes, belly laughs, my new Indian artist friend salil Raina who not only amazes me with his work but writes things that make me belly laugh almost every day.

I’m thankful for the people and small joys that I know I’m forgetting while I write this and will most likely say, “Crap! I forgot….” when I’m done.

I’m grateful for my professional speaking colleagues who are willing to share insights, suggestions and rare moments to wine and dine when our schedules and locations line up.

I’m so thankful for the people who are willing to work with me to make a difference in my business and the world – Deb Baron, Dawn Sorli, Beth Graf and my right hand man, Jeffery Sullivan my management consulting company.

I am thankful on this Thanksgiving Day.

Here in St. Louis (Clayton, actually). Checked in, shuttle driver took me to Whole foods – did groceries, going to polish my co-teaching presentation before bed. Tomorrow St. Louis, Tuesday: Springfield, MO, Wed: Kansas City, MO, Thurs: Minneapolis, MN, and Friday, FARGO!!!

Co-teaching Coaching Last Week

Last week I was working with Permian High School and Odessa High School in Odessa, TX. I love being in the classroom. Both high schools are making great gains in their co-teaching efforts. Not only did I get to work with some awesome teachers and administrators in Odessa, Texas, I attended a Permian High School Football ‘send-off to the state championships’ bon-fire. I also attended an Odessa High Pep rally. They both made it to this past weekend championships in El Paso and they both won! Experiencing West Texas Football and West Texas friendly hospitality is truly delightful. The week flew by.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 has more than doubled in the past 20 years, from 6.5% in 1980 to 17.0% in 2006. The rate among adolescents aged 12 to 19 more than tripled, increasing from 5% to 17.6%. Helping children understand the importance of diet and exercise now can reduce their risk for heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, stroke, cancer, and osteoarthritis as adults.

Some fun ways for teachers to help reinforce good eating habits include:

• Introduce the Food Guide Pyramid, explaining the number of servings suggested for each food group.
• Ask students to record what they eat and drink for a specified amount of time, preferably a week or more.
• After each day, have students place foods they’ve consumed into the proper food groups.
• Have students check their food records for balance. Are their diets out of balance?
• Have students write about what they would do to change their diets to come up with a better balance.

Team Nutrition, at the USDA has a variety of information about the food guide pyramid, including sample lesson plans, available online at MyPyramid.gov.

Kindergarten teacher Marna Ingerson of Lancaster Schools writes, “All of my transitional directions are sung. ‘Line up! Line up! Everybody line up!’ Directions for activities: ‘Turn your eyes up here, up here’. Repeat and point up or down or left or to the chart. Then we begin to read, write, etc. We sing a thank you song for our guest speakers, volunteers, etc. ‘Thank you! Thank you! Thank you very much, Mr/Mrs ___________.’ We deal with respect and consideration of others constantly.”

Singing instructions to children early in their education is a marvelous way to introduce music to learning as well as a unique way to help students transition and to draw attention. Try it and see how it works for you!

For more help with using music in the classroom, visit www.songsforteaching.com for downloads, cds, and other sources to promote learning on any subject with music.