WOW Techniques Work for Yonkers School District!
Youth, they say, is wasted on the young.
Not so in Yonkers! There, the president of the board of education, the president of the PTA, district superintendent, and all administrators—pretty much grown up folks— immersed themselves in something quite simply called “A Wow.”
Once the domain of children and students, WOW is a concept spelled out in WOW: Adding Pizzazz to Teaching and Learning by Stephen G. Barkley of Performance Learning Systems, Inc. It reveals wondrous things teachers and administrators can do to “wow” students—on the first day of school, at the beginning of a lesson, or anytime a little surprise or brain-based stimulus might perk things up a bit.
Having learned of the WOW book and its theory in January, Sheryl Chasin, Director of Professional Development for the Yonkers Public School District in New York, bought the book and handed copies out to every administrator in the district.
Training for Yonkers administrators, delivered by Barkley in June, included techniques for backwards planning for student achievement, a look at coaching skills, Questions for Life®, and how quality can be achieved from a well-thought-out WOW.
Practicing what was preached, the professional development department set about creating a WOW for a subsequent day-long event for all district administrators scheduled in August. To do it correctly, they planned the event backwards, in keeping with Barkley’s backwards planning concept.
What happens when Olympic athletes achieve the goal? They get a Gold Medal, of course. In Yonkers, each administrator received a gold medal complete with red and blue ribbons and emblazoned with “Excellence” before they did anything. They were backwards planning, after all, but everyone knew they would eventually meet the mark.
Seated with other administrators, listening to music that accompanies the Olympics Opening Ceremony and watching a Power Point® slide show of shooting flames while the superintendent brandished a “torch,” 120 administrators were each bestowed with the Gold Medal as the superintendent acknowledged them for their excellence.
Already sufficiently “wowed,” the administrators and principals then received a flag with their school’s name and photo affixed. Chariots of Fire played loudly alongside a Power Point show featuring astronaut Neil Armstrong planting the United States flag on the moon.
Each then proudly marched up to the front of the room and planted his or her school flag into the Styrofoam Olympics rings. Wow. Just like the real deal! Kind of.
Once wowed, the principals and administrators have since gone off to their respective schools and created wows of their own. One principal, upon learning that her middle school was now going to also encompass a high school, simply turned this situation into a WOW by performing a marriage ceremony, complete with canopy, wedding toast, and reception.
Another picked up a heart theme, installing a big beating heart, handing out heart stickers and candy, and performed open heart surgery by opening things up for presentations by teachers on what was important in their hearts– why they got into teaching, what gave them the heart to continue.
As if that’s not enough, now all administrators’ meetings begin with a WOW, anything from a yellow brick road to something from Alice in Wonderland.
And are all these WOW activities meaningful? Sure they are. WOWs are brain-based teaching, tied to learning, laden with creativity and destined to motivate.
They’re not just for kids anymore.
