"Great projects, like great careers and relationships that last, are gardens. They are tended, they shift, they grow. They endure over time, gaining a personality and reflecting their environment. When something dies or fades away, we prune, replant, and grow again."
Seth Godin
I believe naming things gives them a presence, a meaning and a way to identify the influences of our lives - especially in the workplace - and my workplace is school :) Naming a strategy for leadership or teaching or support of students sets the tone for the work and identifies for anyone interested the fact that this work is important to us and deserves to be named and identified as something tangible and worthwhile. The project or strategy may change over time but the intent it originated with will be sustained as valuable and noteworthy.
We have numerous projects and strategies we use at Cranston School to support students and enhance our teaching - and everyone of them has a name, a purpose and plans that are adjusted as need be to ensure maximum effectiveness. This sets a tone for the school that the work we are doing is purposeful, important and worth our attention every day of the school year. Teachers, students and parents are aware of our work by name - there is nothing abstract or undefined about the deliberate, thoughtful work we engage in every day at school.
Our hallways are called villages and are named to reflect the primary work we engage in at our school - peace education. Therefore, our students work in Hope, Peace and Harmony villages and call them by these names every day.
First thing every morning numerous students gather in the gym to participate in SPARK, a 30-minute high intensity cardio workout, intended to focus students who find attention a challenge, through the morning learning session.
At the end of everyday, other students gather for the last hour of the day to engage in social relationship building over hands-on, curriculum-based tasks in Discovery Centres designed to support students with significant learning challenges.
Every school day begins with students gathering in two of our Learning Commons spaces to ensure our on-demand technology devices are available, charged and accounted for, through the Junior Tech Squad. Teachers meet formally with Administration three times per year to discuss their professional strengths and challenges, and frequently engage in personal, visual journaling as well, as a reflective act to strengthen personal teaching practice - we call this the Mindful Teaching Journey.
With new, one-time funding we have recently developed a focused approach for our Learning Leaders to support teachers and students in the classroom - we call this the STS Project (for shoulder-to-shoulder support for each other as professionals). Naming gives purpose, purpose leads to growth.
These are just a few examples of the numerous strategies and projects currently alive on the landscape of Cranston School.
Setting the tone by naming the strategy is another significant piece of the leadership jigsaw puzzle. It ties together various components of school into a coherent expression of the work we do each and every day to ensure student learning is our key purpose. So all those funny names we give to everything we do are actually attached to the work intentionally and help inform the successes we continue to experience in our school.
Naming is important!
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
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