Everest Statements in Elementary School?

Dear colleague,

Recently, one of our colleagues in Saudi Arabia wrote in with the following question:

I appreciate that These 6 Things is aimed at [secondary] teachers, but so much of it applies to [elementary] too! Do you have any examples of Everest Statements made by Elementary Teachers that you could share?

I haven't got mine down yet, but I think it's something to do with… we are all about nurturing curiosity, embracing challenges and expressing ourselves clearly.

What an awesome question! I'm going to share my thoughts here, but if you're an elementary teacher who has an Everest Statement in your room, would you mind writing in using the comments on this post? It would help people out!

So first of all, when someone says “elementary,” I am imagining a self-contained elementary classroom, where students are with the same teacher for most of the school day and are learning multiple subjects from that teacher. I know this isn't what all elementary roles look like, but this is the most common situation for the elementary educators I've met.

For this kind of setting, I've seen two approaches to Everest Statements work well:

• An overarching Everest Statement — something that has touchpoints in all the subjects you are teaching. The colleague who wrote in had an example that would work wonderfully for this (bolded in their quote above), as learning experiences and lessons in all kinds of subjects can nurture curiosity, create challenge, and allow for clear expression.
• Several subject-specific Everest Statements — e.g., I've heard of elementary teachers describing math using the same statement that Caroline Ong, a high school math educator, uses: Math is all about solving problems efficiently in a way you can communicate to others. But then in the ELA block, they use my sentence: we are all about becoming better thinkers, readers, writers, speakers, and people.

The goal with either approach (or both of them!) is creating clarity of purpose for:

1. Us, the teacher!
2. Them, the learners.

Both the teacher and the learners will perform best only when there is clarity of purpose. When those things are lacking, frustration and distraction and time-wasting will inevitably result.

(For much more on Everest Statements, see this “Guide” article I wrote.)

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

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