Expectations

Update for Jan 12-16

https://flic.kr/p/a9zFw

Over our winter break, I shared a Google Form with the staff that was set up to give me feedback about things like vision, expectations, and others’ perspectives on goals I was working towards.  It was good to read the comments some folks left.  They were honest and helped me get a better understanding of what others were thinking.

One of the comments left mentioned something about wanting to know what I expected of them.  My short answer is to do what’s Best For Kids, but I get it.  We are still in the getting-to-know-you phase of being the new guy in the building. Some folks may need a little more detail.

So, I’ll answer by saying I hope my expectations don’t come close to the expectations you have for yourself.  What I mean is this profession is serious business and if I am being serious with myself, I want to continue to learn and grow so that I can be the best I can for kids. I try to hold high expectations for myself to continue to grow, to always reflect and to treat others the way I want to be treated.

So, in response to wanting to know more about my expectations for the staff, here are the expectations I have for myself (mostly reflective questions).  Feel free to borrow any :) --

Build relationships with kids -- You are their official dream coordinator. Think about what you must do to do that job and to do it well.  Try to live up to the late Rita Pierson’s advice:

“Every child deserves a champion - An adult who will never give up on them. Who understands the power of connection, and insists they become the best they can possibly be.  Is this a tough job? You betcha! But it is not impossible. We can do this! We are educators! We were born to do make a difference!”

Allow kids more freedom to learn -- How much time are you facilitating the lesson?  Is the balance of the lesson’s work on you or with your kids?  Think about the last time you learned something meaningful that stuck with you.  How much of the heavy lifting did you do?  How many times did you get frustrated, want to give up, and change your goals?  Now take that experience and work to create it for kids.  Remember that the key is allowing more freedom to allow this way of learning to happen.

Connect with others (across the hall and across the world) -- The world is rich with ideas. With one tap of my phone, I am connected to a constant flow of ideas that I can take and use for my learning community. Yes, social media is cumbersome to learn. Yes, the lingo is confusing. Yes, not everything that takes place on Twitter is good. But I still say go for it. Go for it because it is a new learning experience that is relatable to what we do in the classroom in so many ways. Remember - It’s not about technology; it’s about the learning that we do with technology that is important.

Share what you do -- Your lessons, your ideas, your thoughts matter. People just like you are looking for new ideas and ways to engage their students. Share what you do with the world and stop thinking that your ideas aren’t good enough. They are.

Use good data to inform instruction -- That frown on the kids face or the diverted gaze? -- Good data. If little Sally keeps flushing plastic forks down the back hallway toilet at 1:30pm each day, that should tell you something.  Data doesn’t have to be just about scores and percentages. It’s also collecting information to help determine a pattern of behaviors, positive and negative. Just remember that they are kids. They probably didn’t come to school thinking they were going to ruin your day. Something’s up and it’s up to us to figure it out.

What expectations do you have for yourself?

Video that...makes you smile :)

Articles Worth Reading

Future educators   http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2015/01/future

Intelligence is Important but Integrity Matters More   http://shar.es/1HMJep  via @LollyDaskal 

School districts explore deeper-learning model   #edchat http://ow.ly/GI6ix 

 

Upcoming Dates

Jan 12 --

SOAR Conference, OSU - Herb out

PTO Meeting, 6pm

Jan 13 --

PD Calendar Closed (Limited Subs on these days…)

Testing Planning Meeting (Admins, Test Coords.), 9am

2nd Grade Math PD at CO - 1-3pm

Teacher Steering Committee, 3:45

Jan 14 --

PD Calendar Closed

Children’s Mathematics Book Talk, 8am Media Center

Parent Committee Meeting, 7pm Bradley HS Aux Commons

Jan 15 --

Band/Orchestra Demo for 5th Grade, 9:15

Jan 16 --

Interims due-- Use your licensed professional judgement for this round of interims...

Jan 19 -- MLK Day, No School

Jan 20 --

Testing Window Planning Day (Admins, Testing Coordinators), 8am

Jan 21 --

Children’s Mathematics Book Talk, 8am Media Center

Jan 22 --

Admin Meeting, 8am

Jan 26 --

Yearbook Sale Begins

Jan 27 --

Children’s Mathematics Book Talk, 8am Media Center

Jan 28 --

AD/DC Staff Meeting, 3:45

Jan 30 --

Family Game Night, 6:30pm

Team Times with Herb -- These could just be one on one conversations, too!  No agenda, just time to catch up and help each other to reflect.  My first question will be, “How can I help you?”

Wednesday, January 21

Tuesday, February 3

Tuesday, March 3

Wednesday, March 18

Winter Data Team Meetings -- Pending Approval from Prof Development Dept.

Weds, Jan 28  -- 5th Grade (PM)

Thurs, Jan 29 -- 1st Grade (AM), 2nd Grade (PM)

Weds, Feb 4 -- 3rd Grade (AM), 4th Grade (PM)

Thursday, Feb 5 -- KG (PM)

New Beginnings: First Steps

I am honored to continue serving my district as the next principal of Alton Darby Elementary. The goal of this blog was to document my journey to the principalship because I wanted others who might have been interested in educational administration to see what the journey may be like if they decided to take it. Now that I have accepted a position as principal, I will shift my attention to the transition period that has already begun to take place. I am excited to start documenting these reflections through a blog series called "New Beginnings".

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Since I was announced as the next principal of Alton Darby, the question that seems to come up most is "What is the first thing you are going to do?". I love that question for a few reasons. I think it's funny that sometimes people will ask the question and they stop themselves short of saying "...with all that power?". They see the principal as the decider who makes sweeping changes.

The truth is the "power" does not lie with me. The power lies with US -- the students, parents, teachers, and community members that represent Alton Darby. My mission and my responsibility is to empower these representatives and to synthesize our voices into one vision for learning so that Alton Darby continues to be a reflection of the values, goals and dreams of its community.

The other reason I love this question is because it gives me a chance to talk about my vision for where we can go as a learning community. I believe that leaders need to be transparent in their beliefs. Being transparent helps to foster a culture of trust within the school community. So when someone asks me what I want to do as principal I tell them, "I want to discover the dreams, goals, and passions of the students, teachers, and parents of Alton Darby". I feel that I can effectively lead when I have a deep understanding of what my learning community values and what we want to accomplish. I choose to share this message because I want everyone to know that I believe in building relationships and creating learning environments that are safe and welcoming to all.

So, what is the first thing I will do as principal?

Listen.

Listen to teachers.

Listen to parents.

And listen to students. I can't wait to start having conversations with students so that I can find out what they love about Alton Darby and what they feel we need to focus our attention on in order to help each student reach their goals and discover their passions.

I am thrilled to being my first steps as the next principal of Alton Darby Elementary, and I look forward to continue sharing what I am learning about educational administration.

Simple Ideas Can Lead to Big Changes

Photo from http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-02/lifestyle/35494321_1_happiness-positive-emotions-signs

Simple ideas can lead to big changes.

I ran across this blog post by Jason Markey that describes how he is developing a vision for his school around the simple idea of being kind to others. Markey says,

"Be Kind, Find Your Passion, and Commit to Excellence. This is my new personal vision for education. This is the sentence that I will share repeatedly with every one of our students and more importantly I will bring these thoughts to every conversation and decision I’m a part of."

I really like this video that Markey included. It features the story of Massoud Adibpour who wanted to make a positive impact. Adibpour got some folks together and put simple messages like "Honk if you love someone" and "Smile" on signs and stood alongside busy Washington, D.C. roads. I love this idea of doing something simple to try and make a big impact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EwYLZmkUxo

There's been lots of research done to see what initiatives can make the biggest difference in schools, but it seems the best approach may look more like the vision of Jason Markey and Massoud Adibpour. Maybe the most influential school change initiative we can undertake is to show kindness every single day. Simple things like saying hello to a student or smiling at them can make the biggest difference.

Core beliefs should drive you to improve each day.

“If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.” -Winston Churchill

Last week, I had a conversation with a teacher about our student support process. We are both on our intervention team and the teacher was feeling frustrated about what to do next with a student case.

This was a great conversation for me because the teacher was giving me feedback on a process I helped to develop. I was stunned at first - I was under the impression that our intervention process was working well and we had great results for students during the previous school year. How could this be an issue?

But I quickly ignored those thoughts because this was someone whose opinion I trust and I didn't want to miss a word.

After I listened, I reminded them about a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago about something similar. I told them that the structures we put in place to support students should be the floor and not the ceiling. If what we do is the very best we can do for a kid, then who cares what the process says is the next step?

I've been thinking about my conversation with my teammate a lot since then. While I believe structures and protocols are important, I also believe we often build our own barriers to solutions for the sake of protocols. I believe we need to consider protocols and processes the starting point for our conversations about a student and then use what we know about the student to help him or her be successful.

However, just because something is a core belief doesn't mean I've mastered it yet. This is something I need to continue to reflect upon and improve, and it drives me to want to be a better leader each day.

3 Reasons Why We Gave Access to Everyone

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Today, we gave every staff member access to our school's Twitter account.

This could be a little jarring for those who are worried about what might go wrong. But after all, they have keys to the school building and they are with children all day.  Surely teachers can handle access to a school-wide account.

What's funny is that when my principal and I established our school's social media accounts during the summer, we kept the passwords secret and in a protected file. The whole purpose behind creating these accounts was to help our school get our story out there for everyone to see.  How was that going to happen when only two people had access to the accounts? 

But really, this goes beyond letting everyone access -- It addresses 3 big reasons why teachers need to be connected.

1. On-going Professional Learning -- Those of us who have connected to Twitter know that one of the best things about being connected is the countinous learning experiences we have because of our connections to other teachers around the world. There is a fourth grade teacher who has not only embraced learning through Twitter, but she has also used this new learning to create meaningful and engaging experience for her students through such as participating in the Global Read Aloud.  She is a voice that the staff needed to hear because she is making social media work for kids.

2. Sharing the good things that are happening every single day -- Good things are happening in our building every single day. However, most of it never makes it outside of the walls of our building. We have an opportunity through Twitter to share our stories of learning with the world in real time. Getting our teachers connected to the school account will help share even more of those stories.

3. Becoming the digital leaders our students need -- I showed our staff a Twitter account of a fourth grader in our building. This is an account that was created on his own. He certainly does not meet the age requirements needed to have an account, yet he has one. How many other of our elementary aged students have a social media account?  Rather than taking a "wait and see" approach to social media, we teachers and school leaders need to be taking a "learn with me" approach so that our students have positive models of responsible digital learning.

Today, our staff was given the tools, the chance and the trust to be digital leaders.  We need to be living the learning lives our students are learning so that we can help them be successful.  If we aren't the role models for our students, who will be?

Celebrating Accomplishments

Take a look at my 5 year old daughter's progress evaluation for her gymnastics class:

I bet your eyes went right to the checks that weren't under the "I can do it by myself" column. Mine did too.

When I first looked at this report, I realized that my initial response was to find out what she couldn't do. I stopped myself because I wasn't taking the time to consider what she could do. What if my conversation with my daughter started with, "Well, you can't do a pivot turn by yourself yet"?

Instead, I told her how proud of her I was and I asked her, "Do you want to do this again?"

"Yes!"

What if we took the time to celebrate with teachers and tell them how proud we are of their hard work? How would celebrating our accomplishments affect the start of the next initiative? I bet there would be more willingness to get started.

Change in schools often deals with improving something. There will always be room for improvement--but who will want to bother if we aren't stopping to celebrate our accomplishments?