This Week at South

This Week at South - 6.17: SCARF It

Greetings South Students, Parents, Staff, and Community Members,

Past issues of this newsletter are available at the following link: TWaS Archive.

TWaS is also sent via Canvas Messenger and linked to my Canvas Module for all students and families to access, and shared on South’s FB page.

Part I: The News

Content Disclaimer: I am not omniscient. Don’t see your event or results in the newsletter below? I rely on parents, coaches, and others to send me information to include in the newsletter. Feel free to share positive news and results anytime via my email.

This Week's Activities:

Please see the following calendar for this week’s activities.

South’s Jonas Reynolds to play with Portland Cello Project on Friday:

Wear your ugly holiday sweater and get out and support Jonas Reynolds, who was one of two ASD students selected to play with the Portland Cello Project. The performance is Friday night, December 6th in the Discovery Theater at the PAC from 6 to 7:30 pm.

Students! - Job Opportunity to Work on Mean Girls at the PAC:

There is an opportunity for students 16+ to work crew for the upcoming Broadway show Mean Girls. It is an entry-level stage union position and pays $19 an hour. If students can follow directions, work hard, and carry up to 50 pounds, this would be an excellent job before the holidays. The job and show run from December 4th to 15th.

Interested students should email Michael at mlance@alaskapac.org and CC Codie at ccostello@alaskapac.org ASAP if interested.

South Music Students Stand Out at All State:

Congratulations to the 26 South Musicians who went to All-State!

South dominated with 5 First Chair Awards earned by: Grant Chythlook, Matthew Nordstrom, Auriana Smith, Maren Lund, and Jocelyn Moon. Also, congratulations to the Choir soloists chosen for the Gala Concert: Auriana Smith, Ian Utic, and Maren Lund.

South Winter Concert Series Next Week:

Don't miss the Winter Concert Series from Choir, Orchestra and Band! They are next Week Dec. 10th, 11th, and 12th at 7pm in the South Auditeria. All Concerts are FREE and we are collecting donations of blankets and food cards for the Child in Transition Program. Choir is the 10th, Orchestra is the 11th and Band is the 12th. We hope to see you there!

Winter MAP Testing Window:

All 9th graders and selected 10th-12th classes will be taking the Winter MAP Growth test between December 2-13. Make-up testing is the week of December 16th. Testing dates are chosen by the teacher. Please have your child reach out to their teacher for the exact date they will be testing.

Boys Basketball Skills Camp and Tryout Information

SAHS Boys Basketball season is gearing up for a strong season. They will kick off the 2024-25 season with a skills camp on December 2nd and 3rd from 6:00-8:00 pm in the SAHS gym. The cost of the skills camp is $20. Tryouts are on December 4th and 5th at the following times:

9th and 10th graders will be from 6:00-7:30 pm
11th and 12th graders will be from 7:30-9:00 pm

Please remember to pick up your golden ticket before tryouts. Get ready for a great season of basketball. See you on the court.

Boys Basketball Panda Express Virtual Community Fundraiser:

Order online or delivery from Panda Express on Friday, December 13th and 28% of sales will go to help fundraising efforts for the boys basketball team. This applies to Panda Express in all locations. Use code 928985 for online orders. More details available in the following flier.

Winter Sports and Activities Information: Next up are Basketball Cheer, and Boys and Girls Basketball (12/4)

All athletes need to complete Planet HS (now Big Teams), pay the fee through ParentConnection, and then see Mrs. Cravens in the Activities Office for eligibility processing and a golden ticket. All athletes are required to have a golden ticket to start practice.

Start dates for all sports can be found in the following list.
The registration process is outlined in detail in the following document.

Contact Kara Cravens at cravens_kara@asdk12.org with any questions.

Part II: What I’ve Learned

If you have ever danced, marched, walked, clapped or chanted in unison with others, then you probably felt your sense of self slowly dissolve and a feeling of unity and empowerment grow as your actions synced with others around you. These activities conjure images of marching troops, ecstatic church crowds, fans at athletic contests, and exercise groups. For more on this, see Jonathan Haidt’s research in his book, Righteous Minds.

These processes are the result of mirror neurons, which allow us both to imitate the actions and to anticipate the motivations behind the actions of those around us. In daily interactions, if we mirror, it also makes us more socially accepted and means we are more likely to become a cohesive member of our social groups (Lieberman, 2013).

Beyond the simplicity of synchronized movement’s ability to bring us closer together, there are also more complex processes at work in our social groups. The more aware we are of how they work, the more we can take advantage of their ability to make us more productive, more efficient, and more engaged in the pursuit of a common goal.

Schools are made up of interacting social groups, and ideally, everyone’s effort is aligned to a common goal: to maximize learning and to increase our students’ sense of empowerment and responsibility.

One aspect of this brain research includes SCARF (Rock, 2008), an acronym that stands for:

Status - Certainty - Autonomy - Relatedness - Fairness

Combined, these aspects of our social existence support collective efficacy. That is, they allow us to work together to have a bigger impact than if we worked alone. Furthermore, they help explain why solo geniuses working toward once-in-a-lifetime breakthroughs are a myth. Let’s consider each aspect separately before putting them all together. In this pursuit, I’m grouping Status, Relatedness, and Fairness, and will then address Certainty and Autonomy.

Status - As Lieberman notes in his book Social, “Recognition is a free renewable resource” that allows achievement in pursuit of a goal to be recognized and celebrated (p. 261). In practice, someone who receives praise for their work is likely to be more motivated and work harder at doing the right things. Incidentally, recognition for right action releases dopamine, which also increases the efficiency of short-term memory, which increases performance in learning tasks. So, have you seen someone in your group do something good? If so, make sure to tell them. Also, consider gold stars!
Relatedness - We are the most dominant species on earth because we have learned to work together, to relate to one another, and overcome common challenges. Whether that is running away from a lion in prehistory or solving a calculus problem, the mechanism is the same. On this note, Lieberman observes that, “being smart and motivated without being able to connect with others just won’t cut it.... Individual intelligence may be optimized when it is enhanced through social connections to others in the group” (p. 262-63). Put more simply, the smartest person in the group is the group. And, the most effective person in the group is the person who makes the whole group smarter. That means relatedness also leads to generosity, and generosity promotes the release of oxytocin, which solidifies social bonds.
Fairness - Our brains are fine-tuned to detect unfairness. Our brain recognizes it so quickly it bypasses conscious thought. This is why every toddler whose prefrontal cortex is immature knows when another kid got a lollipop without needing to be trained. Fairness is also one of the foundations of moral reasoning. We tend to associate goodness with fairness and evil with cheating. So, it is no surprise that group norms, which are perceived as fair, will create better working conditions because members of the social group will believe their work is valued equally and that no one will be given a shortcut or recognized for work they did not do.
Certainty & Autonomy - Or put differently: Expectation & Freedom. All productive groups operate on a fine balance of clear expectations and a degree of freedom to meet them in different ways. In other research this is termed defined autonomy. On the contrary, sacrificing autonomy in pursuit of order is the business of a bureaucracy or a totalitarian regime, which only favors one way of doing things. In contrast, innovation and creativity result from understanding the outcome and being freed to chase it using individual strengths while relying on others to compliment our weaknesses (see relatedness above). I really like Atul Gawande’s take on this fine balance from his book The Checklist Manifesto. In fact, a copy of it hangs on my office door:

“The philosophy is that you push the power of decision making out to the periphery and away from the center. You give people the room to adapt based on their experience and expertise. All you ask is that they talk to one another and take responsibility. That is what work. People need room to act and adapt. Yet, they require a (paradoxical) mix of expectation and freedom” (p. 73).

This is democracy at the organizational level. It encourages initiative within a framework. It also activates individual member’s potential, and if put in context of the three noted above, creates self-sustaining momentum.

So, if we want present, productive, engaged, and fulfilling social groups, and we want that for our learning community, then we need to SCARF it.

Recognize right action; put people in groups situated to common and important goals; create the conditions for fairness to prevail; be clear about the outcomes; set people free to meet those outcomes.

SCARF it.

Want to share this part of the newsletter beyond our school community?

Please consider using this link to my Substack: substack.com/@onprincipal

As Always, Onward!

Luke Almon, Principal