Friday Focus
Woodland's Lively and Highly Informational Newsletter
May 5, 2023
beyond potential.
Kudos & Accolades
Hugs and Kisses to Carmen for enlisting parents and coordinating a delicious luncheon to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week!
Thank you to everyone who made our Family Science Night a success! Michelle Barron, Dawn Bates, Carrie Butler, Jennifer Chu, Jana Clark, Sally Duris, Jennifer Kuefler, Jenae Prince, Jeff Richardson, Sarah Schlappi, Judith Shaw, Mikeya Stephen, Christine St. Germain, and Chelsea Young.
And thank you to Carmen and Tiffnay for supporting our parents to get their kids registered for the 23-24 school year!!!
May Students of the Month
Worthy of Note
EOY Benchmark - The EOY benchmark window for AIMSweb and Star opens on Monday, May 8 and runs through Friday, May 19. We will not progress monitor during the benchmark window.
Guided Math - Our last Guided Math conversations on Chapter 8 will take place during 1st, 3rd, and 5th Grade ELFA next week.
Printroom Requests - the print room is now accepting printing for next year. Use this link to access the updated request form - make a copy for yourself!
District Art Show - Students works will be on display at Singleton and Gompers from 5pm - 8pm on Friday, May 19.
Upcoming Field Trips
May 8 - 5th Grade Step Up Day to Washington Junior High
May 10 - Kindergarten to Legoland
May 12 - 3rd Grade to Red Oak Nature Center
May 23 - 2nd Grade to Slammers Game
May 24 - 1st, 4th, 5th, Ochs, Butler to Slammers Game
What Does Brene Say About Comparison?
At our faculty meeting this week, I touched on the negative impact of comparison and how it can undermine our individual growth. Here is an excerpt from Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart that gives some great insight about the inevitability of comparison and a strategy to overcome it.
Swimming is the trifecta for me—exercise, meditation, and alone time. When I’m swimming laps you can’t call me or talk to me, it’s just me and the black stripe. The only thing that can ruin a swim is when I shift my attention from my lane to what’s happening in the lanes next to me. It’s embarrassing, but if I’m not paying attention, I can catch myself racing the person next to me, or comparing our strokes, or figuring out who has the best workout set. When I go into comparison, I completely lose the meditation and alone time I need. And I once hurt my shoulder trying to race a twentysomething triathlete in the next lane.
I have this picture hanging in my study as a reminder to focus on my journey and to stop checking the lanes next to me. It applies to my time in the pool and everything else—how I parent, my work, my relationships—everything! Researching comparison helped me understand that, like it or not, I’m probably going to check the lanes next to me. But what I do next is up to me. Let’s dive in. Sorry, I had to.
Comparison is actually not an emotion, but it drives all sorts of big feelings that can affect our relationships and our self-worth. More often than not, social comparison falls outside of our awareness—we don’t even know we’re doing it. This lack of awareness can lead to us showing up in ways that are hurtful to ourselves and others. All of the experiences in this section are connected to comparison, and the goal is to raise our awareness about how and why they happen so we can name them, think about them, and make choices that reflect our values and our heart. We’re going to start with comparison then get into more specific experiences.
Researchers Jerry Suls, René Martin, and Ladd Wheeler explain that “comparing the self with others, either intentionally or unintentionally, is a pervasive social phenomenon,” and how we perceive our standings or rankings with these comparisons can affect our self-concept, our level of aspiration, and our feelings of well-being. They describe how we use comparison not only to evaluate past and current outcomes, but to predict future prospects. This means significant parts of ur lives, including our future, are shaped by comparing ourselves to others.
I’ve collected data on comparison for years, starting with the research that informed The Gifts of Imperfection. Guidepost #6 in the list of guideposts for wholehearted living is “cultivating creativity and letting go of comparison.” Comparison is a creativity killer, among other things.
Here is my definition of comparison: Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out.
Comparison says, “Be like everyone else, but better.”
At first it might seem that conforming and competing are mutually exclusive, but they’re not. When we compare ourselves with others, we are ranking around a specific collection of “alike things.” We may compare things like how we parent with families who have totally different values or traditions from ours, but the comparisons that get us really riled up are the ones we make with the folks living next door, or on our child’s soccer team, or at our school. We don’t compare our house to the mansions across town; we compare our yard to the yards on our block. I’m not swimming against Katie Ledecky’s times, I’m just interested in the stranger in the lane next to me.
When we compare, we want to be the best or have the best of our group. The comparison mandate becomes this crushing paradox of “Fit in and stand out!” It’s not be yourself and respect others for being authentic, it’s “Fit in, but win.” I want to swim the same workout as you, and beat you at it.
Many researchers talk in terms of upward and downward comparisons. Specifically, Alicia Nortje writes, “When we engage in upward social comparison, we compare ourselves to someone who is (perceived to be or performing) better than we are. In contrast, when we engage in downward social comparison, we compare ourselves to someone who is (perceived to be or performing) worse than we are. The direction of the comparison doesn’t guarantee the direction of the outcome. Both types of social comparison can result in negative and positive effects.”
Most of us assume that upward comparisons always leave us feeling “not enough” and downward comparisons make us feel “better than.” But researcher Frank Fujita writes, “Social comparisons can make us happy or unhappy. Upward comparisons can inspire or demoralize us, whereas downward comparisons can make us feel superior or depress us. In general, however, frequent social comparisons are not associated with life satisfaction or the positive emotions of love and joy but are associated with the negative emotions of fear, anger, shame, and sadness.” These are important findings because, regardless of the different outcomes, in the end, comparing ourselves to others leads us to fear, anger, shame, and sadness.
Here’s what makes all of this really tough: Many social psychologists consider social comparison something that happens to us.
Fujita writes, “From this perspective, when we are presented with another person who is obviously better or worse off, we have no choice but to make a social comparison. ‘It can be hard to hear an extremely intelligent person on the radio, or see an extremely handsome one in the grocery store, or participate on a panel with an expert without engaging in social comparison no matter how much we would like not to’ (Goethals, 1986, p. 272) . . . Even if we do not choose whether or not to make a comparison, we can choose whether or not to let that comparison affect our mood or self-perceptions.”
Whenever I find myself in comparison mode, I think back to an Unlocking Us podcast conversation that I had with my friend Scott Sonenshein about his wonderful book Stretch. Scott is an organizational psychologist, a researcher, and a professor at Rice University. In the book and on the podcast, Scott talks about the popular comparison cliché “the grass is always greener on the other side” and the idea that people spend a lot of time and money trying to get their grass pristine because they want to outdo their neighbors.
As someone who can fall prey to comparing myself and my life to edited and curated Instagram feeds, I laughed so hard when he told me that due to the physics of how grass grows, when we peer over our fence at our neighbor’s grass, it actually does look greener, even if it is truly the same lushness as our own grass. I mean, does it get better than that? The grass actually does look greener on the other side, but that means nothing comparatively because it’s all perspective.
So the bad news is that our hardwiring makes us default to comparison—it seems to happen to us rather than be our choice.
The good news is that we get to choose how we’re going to let it affect us. If we don’t want this constant automatic ranking to negatively shape our lives, our relationships, and our future, we need to stay aware enough to know when it’s happening and what emotions it’s driving. My new strategy is to look at the person in the lane next to me, and say to myself, as if I’m talking to them, Have a great swim. That way I acknowledge the inevitable and make a conscious decision to wish them well and return to my swim. So far, it’s working pretty well.
APRIL CIC Goal Progress
Related Services Requests
The buttons below will take you to our related services request forms. Links to these forms can also be found on the Woodland shared drive in the #IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS folder.
TYPE I GOAL
Reminders
School Calendar - The School Board approved the 23-24 School Calendar. See the attachment below.
Purchasing - FYI: the District purchasing cutoff date has passed. I can still order essential items here and there, but I can no longer place large orders for materials.
Bathroom SIgn-Out - In light of our recent bathroom shenanigans, it is imperative that students sign out when they leave the classroom on their own. It makes investigation much easier when we can narrow down the suspect pool. Also, please please do not send more than one student out at a time. We understand that emergencies happen, but it shouldn't be the norm.
End of Year Activities - We will have a Field Day on Friday, May 26 and Fun Camp (with 60-minute sessions) on May 30 and 31. Schedules and additional info to come!
Quaver Health - The district has purchased Quaver Health to support the Health curriculum. I receive monthly reports from JFK that track classroom usage. Please make sure you have your account set up and are using the lessons with students.
Split Lists - Please update your split lists to reflect new students and/or withdrawn students. There should be 2-class and 3-class split options so we can pivot depending on the circumstances.
Field Trip Info - The last day to submit field trip requests is May 15, 2023. The last day to take a field trip is May 26, 2023.
URGENT: Student Supervision - When classes have been split and students need to return to their classroom at the end of the day to prepare for dismissal, THERE MUST BE ADULT SUPERVISION IN THAT CLASSROOM. This is a liability issue. If the inclusion teacher is not available to assist, call the office and we will find coverage.
Woodland Way Lessons - The Safe & Civil Schools committee has developed a series of Circle lessons to help teach students about the Woodland Way. You can access these lessons here in the SCS folder on the Woodland shared drive. Teachers are not required to use these lessons. You have the flexibility to modify them or create your own. However, it is expected that you will help students understand and demonstrate Woodland Way behaviors. The Woodland Way is our mission: it's HOW we make our WHY a reality.
Technology Reminder - From the Technology Department: Just a reminder that teachers should only be using those programs that are identified on the LEARN Platform as "Approved for Use". It has recently come to our attention that some teachers are using No Red Ink, a program currently labeled as "Reviewed and Denied". Teachers should be using the writing resources within Wit and Wisdom and/or Study Sync. Using unapproved tools, puts us at risk for SOPPA violations. Teachers should reach out to their coaches for support as needed.
Focus on Attendance - Remember that our attendance rate has a larger impact on our school's state designation than ELA and Math achievement COMBINED! When kids come to school, they achieve more.
You can check our current status any time on this spreadsheet by clicking on the Designation Calculations tab. At the writing of this newsletter, our current score is up to 9.31, which is an improvement, but it means we're leaving over 10 points on the table! You can also see who the chronic students are on the Chronic Students tab of the spreadsheet.
Encouraging good attendance is EVERYONE'S responsibility! Classroom teachers should be filling out the attendance graph with your class every day. Restorative Circles help create a sense of community and belonging. All teachers, paraprofessionals, and other staff can connect with students who have chronic absences by welcoming them back to school, letting them know we missed them and we're so glad they are here today. A welcoming environment encourages good attendance.
Communication Reminder - Please copy Farej and me when communicating with related services and other personnel regarding student concerns. It's important that we are in the loop to coordinate support for all students.
Data Presentations - Our next round of Data Team Challenge Presentations will take place on Thursday, May 25. (SIP day)
Learning.com - Learning.com is a tech-education platform that you can use to assign effective, easy-to-follow lessons that engage students in critical digital skills including digital literacy, computer coding, keyboarding, online safety, virtual robotics, and more. Invite Jill to a team meeting to explore the platform!
PST - *Note* The PST referral asks for an F&P level. If you are considering PST for a student, you will need to conduct a Jan Richardson assessment. It is important that we collect as much data as possible in order to make informed decisions. Use this form to submit a PST referral.
Progress Monitoring Schedule - Click here for the 2022-2023 Progress Monitoring Schedule. It can also be found in the Woodland DATA folder. This schedule denotes the minimum number of times to PM. You are free to PM more often.
Students who are in a decoding or fluency intervention will also need to be CBMed according to this schedule.
Decoding Interventions: SRA, 95% Group
Fluency Intervention: Read LIVE
AM DUTY - Please be mindful that the 8:50 bell is when doors open to students and we need supervisors in place at that time. If the bell rings and you are not at your station, you are late!
Important Dates
About Us
Email: kgordon@joliet86.org
Website: https://www.joliet86.org/our-schools/woodland/
Location: 701 3rd Avenue, Joliet, IL, USA
Phone: 815-723-2808
Twitter: @WoodlandD86