An Amazing 2015: Bigger Than Choosing Schools

I often say that I am in the business of preventing mid-life crises. While my work focuses on coaching and supporting parents to make informed decisions about their kids' schools, my ultimate goal is to help parents make educational decisions that honor who their children are at their core. I help parents pay attention, ask the right questions, listen to the answers, act on that information and engage their schools in the process. This provides sanity for my parents, but it does something more important for kids: it teaches them how to see themselves and make decisions that honor who they are as individuals. 

This is the gift I reference in my most popular blog of 2015. This is the gift I wanted to give my students in becoming a middle school teacher and administrator. This is the gift I want every child to receive: the gift of being seen. 

As I think back on 2015, I am tearfully grateful at the opportunity I’ve had to take care of kids, to support parents in giving the gift. You have invited me into your homes, your offices, your lives. You've attended workshops, read and shared my blogs, allowing me be your guide.

What we’ve done together this year was bigger than (just) choosing schools for your kiddos. We have looked at our kids (nearly 150 kids to be exact!) and really seen them. For all of this, I could not be more grateful.

2016 promises to be even better. I’ll be launching a 2-day summer workshop for rising 9th graders to help them be more purposeful and prepared for high school, and I am writing a step-by-step workbook that will help parents choose and engage with their child’s school. But most importantly, I’m over-the-moon, shimmy-in-my-living-room excited to continue doing my part to ensure that more kids know the confidence, joy and sense of purpose that comes from being seen.  

From my family to yours, happy 2016!

The Risk-Free Summer

When I was younger, I wanted to be so many things: a writer, a lifeguard, a video dancer (they were fully clothed and highly choreographed back then), the voice over the intercom at the car dealership, and the first woman NFL football announcer. While some of these dreams had a clear path to becoming a reality, the path for exploring the other ideas was a bit less clear. 

Since I'd spent days and weeks over countless summers watching them at my neighborhood pool, I knew what it took to become a lifeguard. My mother, who in her youth had also worked at this pool, knew exactly how to point me in the direction of my dream. I spent every summer from the age of 15 until I was about 20 as a lifeguard, save that one summer I worked at Red McCombs Toyota. 

Because I didn't know the first step towards becoming a sportscaster, a writer, or a dancer, I fell into the easiest routine rather than exploring the range of things that interested me. My dreams never had a chance to become a reality.

As adults, many of us look back and wish we'd had someone to help us figure out what to do with our interests, passions or curiosities. How many of us are in jobs right now wishing we could be making a living doing what we want instead of what we feel is required? But this blog isn't about us, it's about saving our kids from that place, that place of being 30 or 40 something and having fallen into the easier routine without having truly pursued a passion/interest. Every summer, middle and high-school-aged kids, have an amazing opportunity to do what they aren't always able to do during the school year: pursue their own interests. With the right opportunity and guidance, not only can our kids learn more about who they are and what they like, they can also learn who and what they aren't. Giving our kids the opportunity to figure themselves out requires some trial and error, and there's no better time than during the risk-free summer. 

This Tuesday at Corner Table at 4:30pm, I'll be co-hosting a info-session with Dana Brown from Choate Rosemary Hall, who will share a bit about the summer opportunities her school offers. The event is free, and there will be beverages and light snacks. There's nothing to lose, and who knows? Maybe you'll find the guidance you need to help your child take the first step towards realizing their dream.

To register for the info-session, click here. 

HISD: The More You Know...

Now that we are knee deep in admissions season, many families exploring their options within HISD will have to be more strategic in their decision-making since they are required to rank their choice schools before the December 18th deadline.  

Last week, HISD rolled out a Magnet Matrix parents can use to help them in this process. This tool, used only for non-Vanguard middle and high school programs, allows parents to put in their child's grades, STAAR and Iowa scores to see for which program(s) their child qualifies. The School Choice Office even provides a step-by-step guide for how to use the matrix for those who live by lists. While the tool is intended to be a guide and won't be used by all schools (remember: Vanguard programs use the GT Matrix), knowing on the front end will prevent parents from using one of their 10 options on a school where their child does not qualify. 

Kudos to HISD for trying to streamline the process and for giving parents tools to help them make such a critical decision. 

If you want to learn more about your odds of getting into a particular school, check out this document, which highlights how many applications each magnet school received, how many students were waitlisted and how many offers were extended. 

If you look at that list and think you might want to explore more of your schooling options or you want help making sure you're thinking about your options the right way, shoot me an email or grab a few friends for a mini-school selection workshop. I'm more than happy to sit down at the kitchen table and help you make the most informed decisions about your kids' education.  

The Value in Teaching Kids How to Fail and How to Get Up

A few weeks back, we celebrated my son’s birthday. He’d been rolling around on one of those gliders for a couple of years and was really ready to make the leap to pedals. So on his birthday, we went to the store and picked up his bike. We asked the guys at the shop to skip the training wheels and put on a bell. If the kid was going to have a bike, well then he was going to have a BIKE! :)

When we got home, I ran inside to put a few things away, and when I came back outside, my husband was jogging next to our son as he rode.

Keep your eyes forward.

Keep pedaling.

When you look down, you lose your balance.

Keep pedaling. When you pedal, you keep your balance.

With no training wheels and a little wobble, the kiddo was riding a bike for the first time. And then it happened…he fell. 

My son lost his balance on the bicycle, and in what looked like a bit of frustration, he let the bike fall to the ground, stood up, and then threw his hands in the air, “Yes!” I shook my head confused. Did I miss something? What kid falls off his bike the first time and celebrates? My husband who was standing next to me yelled, “Good job falling, buddy. You did it just like we talked about. You let the bike fall and focused on standing. Good job. Now next time you might fall too and that’s okay, but you did a good job.” My son gave him the thumbs up and got back on the bike.

Get your balance with both feet flat on the ground.

Put one foot on the higher pedal.

Push.

And he was off again.

I looked at my husband and back at my son, and in that very emotional moment, I thought about how important it is to teach kids how to fall and how to get up. By doing just that, my husband had taken the fear out of falling.

Late last week I got a call from one of my families. The daughter received her report card and was devastated by her grade in Geometry. Accustomed to having a^2 + b^2 = c^2 , she’d never been in a situation where the output didn’t directly correlate with the input. Dad wondered if it made sense to drop the class since according to his panicked daughter, this class would ruin her chances to get into college. In my conversation with the dad, I assured him that one six week grade wasn’t going to tank his daughter’s chance of getting into college, but that this experience could be a huge growth opportunity for her. What she needed was for him to coach her through this fall. She needed him to sit side by side and reflect on what caused the fall and to think through how she could get up. Put both feet flat on the ground, then put one foot on the higher pedal and push.  She needed him to teach her that falling is a part of riding, and that when it happens, there’s a process to getting up–that you can learn what caused the fall and prevent it from happening again. We walked through what that conversation could look like, and Coach Dad was off.

So many times when our kids fail (not a typo), they panic and we rush to make them feel like everything’s okay. Everybody falls. It’s okay. But we miss the opportunity to teach them that failing reveals how and where we can be better. We miss the opportunity to be Coach Mom and Coach Dad, to run alongside them and talk them through doing the hard work of studying differently, managing their time, or finding strategies to fight through a tough class with a seemingly unreasonable teacher. Not only do our kids need to know that falling is a part of life, they also need us to teach them how to rebound, so when we aren’t around, they know how to do it for themselves. 

This is what I refer to as grit: the willingness and commitment to not only get up from a fall, but to have had so much practice at falling and learning from our falls, that we, like my son, throw up our hands in celebration at the milestone ahead. This is what our kids need from us. They need us to put on our “Coach” hats and help them see the value in their mistakes. Let’s teach them how to get up after a fall and develop in our kids the skills they’ll need to face the world undaunted by temporary failure. Let's arm our kids with confidence in their ability to get up, put both feet on the ground, find the highest point of leverage and push. 

Here’s to always being our kids' first and best teachers/coaches!

This week’s post was inspired by Have our kids gotten soft? Five ways to teach them grit found yesterday on CNN.com.

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Word of Mouth: Don't give away your power to choose

So I was writing my last post on shhh...the "D" word, and this seeped into the blog. It obviously didn't fit and was my way of running from the last topic, but there's some really good food for thought here, so today, you get two blog entries. Enjoy!

Every year, parents cram into West U because the schools in that neighborhood have great test results, but they also choose the area because the schools feel familiar.  And every year, the district has to submit a waiver to the State to allow those schools to exceed the standard student:teacher ratio, which causes parents to pitch tents and camp out like it's Black Friday during spring registration in hopes of getting one of the coveted seats. While waiting in line, the parents' frustration is palpable, but they'll do anything to avoid a nearby school that they've been told to avoid, even though that school has amazing leadership, really meaningful personal development programs for kids, good results and (shhh) space.  They avoid that school because realtors or friends or mommy groups on FB said those were the schools to avoid, not because any of those groups of people have visited said school, met with the principal, or spoken with parents of children currently served by the school, but purely based on uninformed word of mouth. 

Here's how that hurts our kids:

Everyone in town raves about St. John's being the best school in the city. If your kid is smart, they have to go to St. John's. So what do parents do? They flock in droves to St. John's. They test prep their kids up the wahzoo, hire consultants to help put together the application (this is NOT what I do!), and their kids get in. YAY! Right? But what happens when the kid who shows up on day 15 isn't the kids who test-prepped to get in? What happens when your son is spending countless hours trying to be the kid who scored brilliantly on the ISEE that he doesn't have time to build robots or hangout with his friends? What happens to your daughter who doesn't have time to write or experiment anymore? Our kids' light dims because we've chosen a school purely based on word of mouth instead of who our children are right now and the schools that will help them be the best version of themselves. (Side note: I love St. John's and think it's magical for the right type of kid. Yea, this Kinkaidian said she loves St. John's...just don't tell my sister. Context, people! Context!)

In the same way choosing a school based on word of mouth alone can squash our kids' natural interests and abilities, avoiding a school because of word of mouth can be just as dangerous. Yes, there are some schools that are not good at educating children: the leadership is unfocused, the teachers are moderately invested or tired, parents aren't fully engaged and the students are following the adults' lead. Those are the things that make a school ineffective. But when we hear to avoid certain schools, it's rarely because someone has met with the school leader, seen teachers in action or been to a PTO meeting. We avoid those schools because we don't think our people are in that building. It's unfamiliar, and so without ever visiting, we cross it off of our list. We never step inside to see the teacher who is a beast at making math interesting, which is exactly what our son needs. We never step inside to see the teachers high-fiving and hugging kids in the hallways. We miss the opportunity for our daughter to sit with the three other boys and girls who are hovered over a table building robots. We pass on remarkable opportunities that are a perfect match for our kids because of uninformed word of mouth.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for parents to send their kids to bad schools. I'm advocating for parents to make informed decisions on their children's behalf. There is absolutely a place for getting input from other parents, but when a parent says, "Oh, I would never send my child there," ask them why not? You could say, "Oh, really? What did you see at the school that makes you so adamant?"  Do they mention school leadership? Do they mention teacher quality? Or do they talk about what they heard from other parents or friends? If parents are going to be a resource for you in this process, vet them! Make sure they have real-life experience with the schools. And if they don't, tune out the noise, and go see for yourself.

Right now, public and private schools all across the city are offering tours. Sit down with your spouse, closest friend, parent or whoever shares the decision-making responsibility with you and figure out what kind of learning environment will be best for your child. If you need help with this part, email me, and I'll sit with you at your kitchen table and help you figure that out. Then take that list and go visit schools. And don't be afraid to venture into the unknown. You may find that the school you've been avoiding is the perfect place for your son or daughter–even if it feels a little unfamiliar to you. 

The "D" Word: Oh, no! Not again!

I am reluctantly writing this post because it will be my second on diversity in the same number of weeks, and I have no interest in being pigeonholed as "that Black woman who writes about diversity in schools" rather than "that woman who helps parents find the best fit schools for their kids, wherever those schools may be."

In what seemed like the wee hours of the morning, a friend sent me "Why White Parents Won't Choose Black Schools," a Huffington Post article with the message "This appears to be in your wheelhouse. I'd love to discuss it with you (or for you to write a blog about it if you have time). Interesting thoughts and I don't know if it happens in Houston, but it still seems relevant."  In my head I responded, "Nope–not going to do it. I wrote about diversity last week, and I'm not going to dig my own hole. Pass," and I closed the FB Messenger app without even reading the article. 

Then I saw there was a new post in another one of my FB groups: this one is comprised of Houston Area educators of various races who have a unanimous interest and dedication to continuing the conversation (about race and race relations) in an effort to better our city, country and world. It was the same damn article. 

Fine. I read it. As soon as I got to the end, I opened my blog without hesitation, and here's why: 

I have an unfiltered interest and dedication to better our city, country and our world by helping parents make informed decisions about their children's education. And how could I dare encourage families to push past their fears to think differently about how choosing a school can honor who their children are if I am not willing to push past my own fears?

Exactly. 

So here's my takeaway: the world is full of all types of people, and if we keep our kids in places where they only see people who look like them, all they will know and value in the world is what they saw in their formative years. 

In my first year of teaching, I was a Teach For America corps member at an under-resourced all Black school here in Houston. Many of my students had never been in a class with a white person, let alone have had a conversation with one. So all they knew about white people, they learned from television or conversations they overheard, leaving them to define for themselves in their little kid minds, who or what non-Black people were like. This very thing limited their ability to relate and understand the world. There was always an 'us' and 'them' mentality–not an 'us' versus 'them', but rather a lack of familiarity that caused separation.  As a Black person who went to extremely diverse schools in Lovett Elementary and Lanier Middle as well as the less diverse Kinkaid, I knew that there was so much my kids were not experiencing, so much education that my kids were missing out on by not having diversity among them.  

My kids in that all Black school suffered because of their lack of exposure, and kids in all White schools suffer as well. School isn't just about academic growth, it's also the place where kids learn how to exist in the world, how to relate to each other, how to engage with each other through their similarities and their differences. And when our kids are surrounded by people who look like them, live like them, and talk like them, they never have the opportunity communicate with and more importantly see value in people who don't fit into the world they know. In the same way that the kids in my school saw non-Blacks as 'them', students in all White schools see others as 'them'. 

I don't know about you, but I'm all for there being one 'us'. Think about it.

And if you need one more reason to consider a diverse learning environment for your child, read this letter by a woman on her experiences during elementary school with a best friend who was not her race.

Diversity in Schools: How it matters in school selection

Diversity.

Whether we are talking about racial or socioeconomic diversity, we cannot deny the impact diversity plays in choosing schools for our children. In some cases, this is deliberate: we want our kids to be exposed to and relate to people from all walks of life, and so we gravitate towards schools that embody this value. In other cases, we focus on a school’s academic performance in a vacuum, and those instances, we rely on rankings, turning a blind eye to diversity altogether. 

The reality is, diversity influences quite a bit more than our kids’ experiences with each other–it influences one of the most important factors in choosing a school: how teachers teach.

Take a look at these two photos: one represents a classroom at one of the highly ranked public schools in Houston (not one in particular, just in general terms) and the other picture represents a school a little farther down the list, but still in the A/B range. 

When you look at the picture on the left, one naturally sees kids who all look the same, but when you look at the photo on the right, you see variety in color.  Obvious, right? But here’s the point: when you look at the photo on the left, it’s actually harder to see the diversity that exists there because on the surface everyone looks the same. It’s harder to “see" the boy who needs to touch things in order to understand or to identify the girl who needs to hear from a friend in order to truly grasp the concept. If the diversity is harder to see, it’s harder to respond to. Because you can easily see the diversity in the second photo, you naturally expect to have to approach that group different purely based on the various shades in the image. This is true for teachers as well. When they look out onto a class of kids who on the surface are by and large the same, the teaching methods they use are by and large the same. However, when teachers look out onto a class of kids that looks diverse, they are visibly reminded that their kids come with varying academic levels, learning styles and preferences. And the reality is, we address and respond to what we can see easily–that applies to teachers as well.

If you have a child who is a natural learner, who can sit, listen to a lesson, follow the instructions given and do the work, you’re good. This may mean very little to you. However, if you have a child who needs to hear things a few times before she understands it, or if you have a child who needs to move around and engage physically before he’s able to process and “get” it, you may want to consider a school where the diversity not only makes it more likely that your child will be “seen” but that (s)he will also see himself in others. 

Truly gifted teachers know kids have various learning styles, and that the only way to be effective is to teach in the way students learn. And while it takes years of experience and training to recognize the different learning styles and effectively employ teaching methods that engage all students, you might find that teachers who do this best are tucked away in schools that wouldn’t initially be on your radar. They may even be hiding in the neighborhood school you’re avoiding.

So as you prepare to visit schools as a part of HISD’s Magnet Thursdays, which start this week and run through December, I encourage you to broaden your search. Be deliberate in thinking about the role diversity plays in how your child experiences school, both in and outside of the classroom. 

For a parent’s perspective on choosing a diverse school, check out Our School is Title I and We Like It. If you want to talk diversity in schools or about how to honor your children by choosing schools that fit them, email me at aisha@crumbineed.com. 

Boarding Schools: Don't sacrifice what's best for what's local

This morning, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting around the table with admissions counselors from The Ten Schools, a group of ten distinguished college preparatory schools in the country. Present today were Phillips Academy, The Taft School, Choate Rosemary Hall, St. Paul, The Hotchkiss School, Deerfield and Phillips Exeter, seven of the country's highest performing schools. We spent the time discussing what we can be doing collectively to encourage more families to take advantage of the enormous opportunities these schools provide. 

I don’t have to tell you how competitive it is getting into a great school in Houston or how the supply lags so far behind the demand that we could open full schools with the number kids on waitlists. The variety here is good, but many students find themselves unable to find or get into a school that meets both their academic as well as personal needs. In my work with families, I encourage parents and students to first take a long look at who their kids are right now and then spend time figuring out where they want their kids to be academically and personally four years from now. My job is to guide them through that process and help them figure out which schools are likely to help their son/daughter get from here to there. Sometimes those schools are within our city limits. Other times, the schools here are good but they aren’t the best for their son or daughter. When that happens, I ask parents, “Is it more important that your child be in the place where they feel like home–where they can thrive and have their academic and personal development needs met? Or is it more important that they be home?”

Parents pause.

Every parent wants to know which school is the best. What if I told you that the best school for your child wasn’t in Houston? That there was a school where your son or daughter could thrive beyond your wildest hopes and dreams for them? What if I told you that despite the myths you’ve heard, sending your son or daughter to boarding school doesn’t mean you love them less? Your love for your child is a constant, no matter near or far. What if I told you that your daughter could learn to be a better advocate for herself with the deliberate, proactive support and advising at a boarding school? What if I told you that your son, surrounded by students from over 26 states and 10 countries, could be challenged to see–literally visit and see–the world from various perspectives while being pushed to grow academically and personally? That your budding young adult could be in the place where he can become the best version of himself because he’s in the school that is the perfect fit for him?  

Every single parent wants their child to be in a place where s/he can develop confidence, grow academically, find their passion, and more importantly find their place in the world. Sure, those things happen in Houston, but sometimes they don’t and families shouldn't sacrifice what's best for what's local. 

So I ask you, “Is it more important that your child be in the place where they feel like home–where they can thrive and have their academic and personal development needs met? Or is it more important that they be home?”