Drjmoorhouse

G.R.I.T. I originally had a different message planned to share with you this month, but I have recently been reminded of an experience and feel convicted to share it with you now. Hooray for everyone, as you will receive two messages this month! LOL. Several years ago, while I was a high school principal, I became aware of a researcher named Angela Duckworth. Her work focused on the cadets of West Point Academy in an attempt to determine the best predictor of their future success. Long story short, she developed an instrument called the GRIT scale. Cadets that scored higher on the scale were more apt to go on to accomplish great things at the Academy. She presented this research on a TED Talk and even wrote a book defining GRIT, in part, as the ability to overcome obstacles and delay gratification. As a high school principal, I found this research to be immediately valuable, and I used Duckworth’s model to develop a GRIT program for my high school students. I turned the term ...

Stop lights or Roundabouts One of the things that I love about Kingsport City Schools is the opportunity we have for professional learning. I want to share with you a learning that I recently experienced that was a real paradigm shift for me and caused me to reflect. So much so, that I am going to try and share it with you and hopefully it will have the same impact on you. So stick with me as we go through this exercise! Question: How might we prevent cars from hitting each other in an intersection, while maintaining the maximum flow of traffic? Both of the scenarios pictured above are viable solutions. So, how are they different? The stop light solution is based on a set of assumptions. #1 People need to be told what to do. #2 Problems need to be managed with rules and complex technology. #3 One must have a plan for every possible scenario. The roundabout solution is also based on several assumptions. #1 People can be trusted and will use their judgement to do the rig...

The One….. A few weeks before Christmas, my mother-in- law passed away. She was a neat lady. She taught Chemistry at the start of her career (around 5 years) and then took time away to raise her children. When it was time to return to work, she could not get a job teaching and was hired as a chemist at Nuclear Fuel Service. She was, for several years, one of only six Nuclear Fuel Inspectors in the world and the only female Nuclear Fuel Inspector in the world. As we stood in line for the receiving of friends, a man came through the line and introduced himself to my wife. He stated that we would not know him. He commented that he was a student in her mother’s class. He detailed how, as a high school student, he was just an average student,  destined to average outcomes until he had Mrs. Gardner’s Chemistry class. He stated that she saw something in him and lit a fire under him. He said having her as a teacher had changed the trajectory of his life. I asked him where that traje...

Headwaters A new piece of information about me, I was born in Minnesota. My dad was from Minnesota and my Mom is from Iowa. They came to Tennessee for my mom to get her teaching degree from Milligan College. They fell in love with the area and never left. This is a similar story to many graduates of Milligan College. I digress. Many of our family vacations were spent visiting grandparents in either Iowa and Minnesota. On one particular vacation, I remember going to Northern Minnesota to visit Lake Itasca. This may not sound like a significant location to you, but it is the headwaters of the Mississippi River. What struck me as a kid, was how large the Mississippi River was. We had to cross it going and coming every year to visit my grandparents. I was always marveled by the barges and shipping yards that I would see along its banks. This river travels over 2500 miles, carrying fresh glacial water, to the Gulf of Mexico. This water is the source of life for plants and animals ...