You’ve heard them right, those pharmaceutical commercials where everyone appears to live a better life by taking that drug?  Then I’m sure you’ve noticed the often lengthy list of side effects that are read at the end of the commercials.  I find it comical, because there’s always happy people on the screen with soft uplifting music playing as the narrator reads a long list of side effects that are often worse than life without the drug.  View this real commercial for Chantix and try not to laugh.

Ok, so we know sometimes what is intended for good can have some pretty harmful side effects.  Let’s turn that around.  I hope that our students don’t feel any harmful side effects from attending our classes or our schools, though that is something to consider.  Instead, I wonder what positive side effects would be experienced by students that attend our classes and our schools?  It’s a thought that has been on my mind a lot lately, especially as schools across the country enter standardized testing season.  There’s a lot of conversation in my PLN that would suggest the side effects could be more important than the effects that we acknowledge up front.  For example, one could imagine that students who attend my math class should leave my math class with a breadth of knowledge as determined by the content standards.  However, year after year I become more interested in those side effects and the impact those can have on student success beyond school.  It’s not that I’m uninterested in the content I teach, but I’m more in tune with the side effects that I want my students to experience as a result of attending my class.  For school leaders, what side effects do students experience as a result of attending your school?  I invite you to consider the side effects that students experience from attending your class, school, or district.  Please share those side effects in the comments section of this blog post.  Here are mine:

• increased awareness of one’s learning preferences and style
• perseverance
• empathy
• tolerance
• confidence in their ability to leverage digital sources to learn anything
• a growth mindset