Wellness Update-Week 3

Me running on treadmill

Some observations from my morning workouts this past week:

• Not weightlifting for 6 years is probably not good.  Not so much when I did my lower body workout, but Wednesday's upper body workout really killed.

• Even when you pay attention to how to use the machines, you can still forget how to use them and get frustrated that you look silly.  Need to ask for a reminder about a couple this week.

• I really don't like running on the treadmill.  It is not so much the feeling that I am putting out all this effort and going nowhere, but rather that it is really hard to get lost in my run when I am on the treadmill.  The scenery never changes, in fact most often I am looking in a mirror at me.  The pace never lets up, unless I agree to give in an lower it. Time seems to creep slowly by, unless like this week the machine throws me for a loop and is programmed to change speeds at set intervals.  

Monday I ran for 20 minutes at 6.1 mph (9:50 pace).  It was the fastest I had run all summer by over a minute and I was able to make 20 minutes.  The best part was that twice during my run, after each 5 minutes of running, I had a 1.5 minute burst where the pace increased to 6.4 mph (9:10 pace) automatically and then dropped down again.  I actually found myself looking forward to these moments of a quick burst of speed.  It made the run go much smoother and seem to not last as long.

With this in mind, I was really looking forward to my run on Wednesday.  Until it started and the first change of pace came.  It was then I discovered, I really hate running on a treadmill on an incline.  Instead of a change of pace, it was a change in incline.  I went from 1% incline to a 3% incline, and then to a 4% incline, before settling back down to 1% for the final 9 minutes, of which I only lasted 4 until I had to walk (I did finish by running the last 2.5 minutes when they came in to take my picture and pride kicked in).

I also found out that sometimes running while looking at yourself run is not such a bad thing.  As I was running on Wednesday I looked at my legs and noticed that my left calve looked larger than my right calve.  I thought it might just be me being tired, or maybe the angle I was looking at in the mirror, but I filed it away in my head.  On Friday I looked again, and find that no I was right my left calve was definitely larger than my right one.  With this in mind I asked our athletic trainer at PHS Ryan Carrol what he thought.  He agreed, then after a few more questions he suggested I speak with my doctor, Dr. David Darr, and see what he thought.  I had an Ultra Sound on Monday, waiting to hear what they find, but without the Journey to Wellness I would not have thought much of the slight pain in my left calve and not gotten it checked out, so I am learning more each week about my own state of health.

Building Students is a lot Like Building a School Building

This post is several days in the making and has been spurred on by items I have read, things I have observed, and thoughts I have thunk as the scarecrow might say.  It really all began with an email from our Director of Professional Development, Jennifer Felke (@jenfelke) commending our staff for a great second week of work at the School of Inquiry.  It got me thinking about what a great week it was, despite some challenges that are simply part of starting something new.  It also prompted me to let my staff know what I had observed this week and what a great job I thought they had been doing and how fortunate I feel to work with such an awesome team.  In the midst of that message, I began to think about a video I had taken earlier in the week of construction continuing on our permanent building. It lead me to write this:

In some ways this year is going to be like watching our new home being built.  There will be times when we see incredible changes in a few short days-in 1 week we have gone from an empty shell with an elevator shaft (image above) started to the video I shot Thursday (http://youtu.be/s9Bi6slKPFs)-to today having the atrium cut out and steel being put over the first floor (I was getting looks from the construction guys so no picture or video unfortunately but I will get one tomorrow)-to times when it will seem as if nothing much is being done to move the ball forward that is visible, but incredible work will be getting done in ways we don't see-putting in electrical and floor boxes, wiring for technology, creating the HVAC and other mechanical areas-that are just as important as the flashy stuff we can ew (sp?) and ah over.  

Saturday morning I read this post by Cale Birk via Connected Principals.  In it he speaks of the flow zone.  That place where new challenges are at the appropriate level of challenge.  Where learners are supported as they reach beyond what they think they can do and go further than they had ever dreamed.  It is the place where tasks are not easy, but are not overwhelming.  Finding this flow zone for our students, at all the various levels of expertise they have, will be one of our greatest challenges.  For me with my staff it means giving them the confidence to leave the site of the shore, without knowing the terror of being lost at sea.  It means not simply being the head cheerleader, but also asking tough questions about our practice and being able to guide us as a group to answers to those questions.

Final Thoughts:

Whenever you begin to try something new  you are going to have those  moments of sure bliss, when everything is working and all seems right with the world.  Those moments when you say, "why I have I not been doing this all along".  You are also going to have those moments when you want to say, "why did I ever agree to try this.  What was I thinking!"  With either comment, I want my staff, and myself to focus on what is working, what needs improving, and most importantly to not lose sight of our ultimate goal, creating a great learning environment for students to excel in.

Wellness Update

My brother and I after Soldier Field 10 Mi.
I am the rounder shaped one.

As part of my goal to model being a life long learner to my students and staff I have dedicated one day a week in this blog to chronicle my journey to wellness in which I am attempting to get healthy and learn more about myself in the process.  Last week's post was a rundown of how out of shape I am, not as bad as I feared but definitely not good.  This week I am hoping to explain what I learned about myself during this process in week 1.

So here I go, things I learned last week:

• 5:15 AM is really early in the morning, and seemingly harder when I know after my 30 minute drive I will need to work out, as compared to when I left at that time as a swim coach and only had to put others through a rigorous workout.

• I really like being on a rowing machine.  I had never done this before, and found it to be not as daunting as it first looked for someone who can be rhythm and co-ordination challenged.

• Working out is much better when you have someone there to push you.  This is true of any endeavor you take and a main reason why I like collaborating and working on teams.

• I still hate running on treadmills.  This was probably exacerbated by having to run at a 10 minute mile pace, or faster, after spending my summer running at a leisurely 10:30-11:00 minute pace, but the boredom and feeling of going nowhere still drives me nuts.

• I am really tied to following instructions.  Even though the 10 minute or less pace was incredibly challenging, I felt obligated to do it, as that is what they had programmed into my key card for a workout.  I am not so much of a slave to directions though that I did not cut the program short (at 20 minutes vs. the 30 they programmed) when I felt that I had gone as far as I could go.  It helped that I had been told that if I did interval training I would only have to do 20 minutes, otherwise who knows what might have happened.

• Eating only salad at lunch is boring.  And ultimately leads to me snacking as soon as school ends and raiding the chocolate stash in the School of Inquiry.  (Yes English teachers, I know not to start a sentence with And, but it the format of my bullets better than a comma and continuation of the previous thought).

• I need to get my staff to put a lock on the chocolate stash and not allow me to have the combination.  While I am willing to eat healthy, I am also too easily distracted from my goal by the soothing stress relieving properties of  the cocoa bean.

Results for the week:

1.5 lbs lost, no real workouts done, but 1 fitness test that I counted as a workout and 1 instructional period on how to use the equipment I also counted as a workout.

The First Week of Inquiry

We finished our first week at the School of Inquiry with some amazing momentum.  I am so proud of the time, effort, and embrace of change that my staff has shown this week.  I am also impressed by the way students have jumped in to a new environment and way of learning.  Embracing the idea, though they are uncertain in many cases how it will all work out, of changing how they will learn.  Some highlights from the week:

Monday's Amazing Race was awesome.  You can see how it went in this video by Tom Felke.  I know I had a great time watching students take on challenges and then hearing them process what they learned in our group discussion.  On Monday night we had a packed house for our first ever Back to School Night for parents with the first session on the School of Inquiry at overflow capacity.

Thursday brought a visit from Theresa Shafer, Online Community Manager for the New Tech Network, and a day of students learning about themselves and helping to create the culture of the school.  In Global Perspectives students had an intense discussion about what Trust, Respect, and Responsibility meant to them, and how they wanted to see them utilized in Inquiry.  In their math courses students learned about their personalities in the What's Your Color activity and how to utilize what they learned about these personalities in their group work.  In Leadership Seminar students began their journey to discover more about who they are as people and what strengths they posses.

Friday, brought my two favorite moments of the week. One was student based, one teacher based.  The student based moment came watching students in their math courses build towers out of spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow as facilitator Michael Delp encouraged them..  Pictures of the winning entries are below.

The teacher moment came in the afternoon.  After having a rough morning in which they felt they had lost their students, my Global Perspectives facilitators (Lisa Mercer and Grant Masson) went to lunch and prep and completely reworked their lesson plan for the afternoon to be a more engaging activity.  It was an amazing moment to see and hear about.

Rookie Mistakes

The last post I wrote was about what my learning journey would be this year, that I would learn more about how to keep myself healthy through my journey to wellness.  That would be the focus of my non-educational learning.  Today I got another area to learn in, and it really was not a surprise or an unknown area.  Today I learned about making Rookie Mistakes.

For those of you not in the Plymouth area, or long time blog readers, today was the opening of the School of Inquiry, our New Tech Network PBL School within a School.  It should have been an incredibly exciting day seeing my staff getting work with and build relationships with our students.  Instead, it became-for me the day of Rookie mistakes.  My first Rookie Mistake came as I was walking down the hallway towards Inquiry, after spending the morning supervising student pictures in another part of the building.  Jen, my director of professional development, came walking down the hall with a big smile on her face.  She expected me to ask how it was going, I instead asked what time our Wednesday Collaboration Meeting was to begin.  It is not that I did not care about how things were going, nor was it that I didn't want to hear, but I wanted to make sure I would not be late for the meeting and have time to make one last check on pictures, plus I wanted to hear how everyone's day was going.

My second rookie mistake was made later in that very meeting.  As we were having some idle conversation, while waiting for all staff members to arrive, I mentioned that I was either going to workout after school, or play golf with the principal of the high school.  One of my staff members was sitting next to me, and he said play golf.  While nothing more was said, the look on his face said all I needed to know.  He was thinking, "we are killing ourselves doing all of this work and change, and he is going out to play golf."  I instantly regretted saying it.

I had forgotten the number one rule of team building.  We are all in this together and all must be "All In".  When I was a swim coach, I was able to get our swimmers to work incredibly hard for long hours, but I what made it work was that we were all there together, all working hard, and all present at every practice.  I had forgotten to always be All In.  While my staff was having a exciting, and due to all the change, stressful day, I was not present-as I was fulfilling my duties at picture day, and I was then going off to play golf.

Rookie Mistakes are not in and of themselves fatal, and they happen to help us grown. How we respond, determines this growth and lack of fatality.  I just wish they were avoidable.

Journey to Wellness

Plate 1 of Last Supper

Plate 2 of Last Supper

Desert from Last Supper

Normally I stick to education topics on this blog, but this year I have challenged my staff to spend 20 minutes of their school day, everyday, learning something new.  It can be related to school, or not related to school, but it has to be spent learning and it must be shared with other members of our staff and with our students so that they can see us modeling learning.  I really wasn't sure what I wanted to learn this year, I am continually learning about education, and a wide range of other topics, but I wasn't sure what I truly wanted to pursue.  I enjoy politics, government, and economics, but tend to want to stay away from those in this forum, as they so often inflame passions.

A few weeks ago, our superintendent Dan Tyree approached me about being part of the Plymouth Lifeplex's Journey to Wellness Campaign.  In this program Dan and I would be measured and evaluated, given access to Fitness Forum's facilities and staff, and then write about our journey to get healthier for the local newspaper.  It is a program that they do each year with different community members.  I thought that I really needed to get back into shape-realizing that my current round condition is a shape, but not one that I want-and that being in a program that would give me some serious accountability would be good.  I had spent June running every other day, spent July trying to run every other day-not so good-and have not run since we left for vacation on July 22 three weeks ago.  My ability to over focus on my job, to the detriment of my wellness was becoming evident again.  Thus, my learning for this trimester will be about learning more about myself and how to get healthier.

Yesterday I had my last suppers at a local buffet (pictures above).  Today I went for my fitness evaluation, they had us talk about our exercise and health history.  I told them that I had played sports growing up-baseball, swimming, basketball, pickup football-had played 2 years of high school football, 3 years of high school basketball, swam for a year, played lacrosse for a year, and water polo for 2.  During college I played 4 years of intramural basketball, but did not exercise much at all ballooning from my senior year of high school 165 lbs to 225 after my freshman year and as high as 315 lbs 4 years ago when I first started running 5Ks and dropping down to 242.5 when I started at PHS.  I gave them my sorted history of running, barely running a mile in my first Race to Wrigley, finishing the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon (13.1 miles) 2 years later, running 5 mile race this past April on roughly a 10:30 pace, nearly dying at the end of May when without really training I ran the Soldier Field 10 Miler in a total time slower than my Mini Marathon pace to my present regime of going out and running 3.1 miles on a 10:45-11:00 pace.

During my evaluation I learned that I am 6'2.5" (I somehow have grown), weigh 279 lbs, have a resting heart rate of 68 bpm (which they say is good), am at 29.1% body fat (with 197.8 lbs of lean mass and 81.2 lbs of fat mass), have BMI of 35.8, can stretch 12 inches (not good), have a VO2 Max of 39 ml/min/kg (this measures how much oxygen you can take in while exercising and is good) can leg press 160 lbs 10 times (I admit that I think I could of done more but had done like 10 reps prior to finding a decent weight) chest press 75 lbs 10 times in short I am kinda weak.

After we got done, we set some goals.  My goals are thus:

1. Lose 32 lbs so that my body fat is at 20% and thus in the normal range.
2. Exercise 30-45 minutes 3 times per week, running 3.1 miles on 10 mile pace when I run.
3. Increase my strength-no real measurable goal here as I doubt my base for starting.

Hopefully this will be an interesting journey of learning more about myself, plus a good once a week blog topic.  One thing I truly believe as administrators we spend a lot of time working for our schools, which is good, but we need to have balance so that our health does not deteriorate.  My last goal is to find and maintain that balance.

What do you want to learn between now and November?

Our Most Important Mission

Flip, RISE, Common Core, ECAs, ISTEP+, High Stakes Testing, Race to the Top, Longer Days, Longer School Years, Blended Learning, Charter Schools, Online Learning, NovaNet, 1:1, BYOD, Design Thinking, Project Based Learning, Inquiry Learning....The changes and programs come fast and furious in the 21st Century, so much so that I think 21st Century Skills ultimately might come down to learning best to manage the rapidity and frequency of change.  With all of these programs, stresses, and attempts to transform our educational system I sometime fear that we are losing sight of what is has continually been proven to be our most effective methodology, relationships.

This was brought home to me yesterday when I read Adam Saenz's post at the Huffington Post titled From Jail to Harvard:  Why Teachers Change the World.  Mr. Saenz tells his story of how he fought depression throughout his youth, and then was inspired by two notes left in an old journal by two former teachers.  The notes, only a few sentences, spoke of the qualities two of his teachers saw in him.  They praised him for his work, and spoke of the future they believed that he had.  In short, two a young man struggling with depression, they gave him hope.  He utilized this hope to first take one college course, then another, and finally at the age of 27 to earn his college degree.  He then went on to graduate school and to earning a PhD.

As we begin the school year, it is my hope that all of us, despite the rapid and ongoing challenges and changes we face as a profession, rededicate ourselves to the methodology that pays off the most, relationships, even though most often we may never know how really impactful our kind words may prove to be.