Monthly Archives: August 2015

It’s Friday already!

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It’s the first Friday of the first week of school. Where did the week go?! It was an action packed week and I really feel like it was my best first week ever. Though this is my 8th year in the classroom I did a lot of firsts this week.
I developed a vision and mission statement for my classroom and shared it with parents; students created representations of themselves or something they like with Play-Doh; we set performance and learning goals for this year; I “flew” around the classroom like an airplane and tumbled on the ground; at Back-to-School Night parents set goals for their students and I asked them to talk to their kids about what they wanted to see; created a class news letter; invited an administrator to my classroom (they’re always welcome), and he saw my tumble; and I made positive contact with at least one parent every day. Wow, what a week! I’m really excited to keep the momentum going. Is it Monday yet!

My Summer “Vacation” (Learning Never Stops)

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As summer quickly comes to an end I want to reflect on my “vacation”.  I put vacation in quotations because I never had an extended period of recreation.  Don’t get me wrong, my family and I did take a couple of extended trips, but for some reason this summer I never completely disengaged from taking part in meaningful learning experiences.  Usually I’ll set lofty summer goals of curriculum development and course tweaks (sometimes I meet them, sometimes I don’t), and I always participate in a week long seminar related to social studies.

This summer was a little different, no lofty goals, my only real plans were to hang out with my kids.  Then right before school was out I learned about a a Voxer book study on Beyond the Bake Sale by Anne T. Henderson, which discusses the educational benefits to student of having strong parent engagement in the school community.   Since I didn’t have any plans I decided to read the book and join the group.  It was a great experience being able to share ideas and experiences from the book with educators from all across the country.  I really feel that parent engagement is something that as an educator I definitely need to develop, and the lessons that I learned from the group have helped me focus on parent engagement this year.  I have already joined my school’s PTSA, spoken with the PTSA President about engaging with my Leadership class, created a class bi-weekly news letter, and created a parent contact schedule for the school year.  My contact schedule will help me reach my BHAG for this school year.

I also read four other books this summer that have/will impact my classroom this year:

What Great Teachers Do Differently and What Great Principals Do Differently both by Todd Whitaker. I had three take aways from the two books is the importance of learning from the best educators because you want to have those best practices being practiced throughout your school.  Second, education is about people, not programs because the programs are going to come and go, so it really matters how we develop our relationships with the our parents, students and faculty, who aren’t going anywhere.  Finally, it is important to make caring cool.  That goes back to building relationships.  Once your faculty and/or students know you care about them, then they are truly willing to learn from and with you.  We have some amazing teacher leaders in my school and I will continue to pursue positive relationships with them, and take what I learn from them and apply it to my classroom and my relationships with my students.

Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.  It’s really hard to describe all the amazingness in this book.  If you want to bring high energy into your classroom with Passion, Immersion, Rapport, Asking and Analyzing, and Transformation, you have to check this book out.  I borrowed this one from the library and I wish I hadn’t because I had to use sticky notes throughout the book instead of being able to write in the book.  I’ll say this, my first three days of school are going to look different this year, and I have so many great hooks that we should have a lot of fun and engaging lesson.

Drive by Daniel Pink.  This was the last book I read this summer and one that really got me thinking about how we operate in schools.  Motivation 3.0 is the operating system of the present and is really going to shape a lot more of the activities that I do in my classroom.  I’m going to do a have my students set a performance goal and a learning goal for this school year, then on back-to-school night have the parents set their own performance and learning goal for their students.  After the parents have written their goals I am going to show them what their students wrote as their goals.  My goal is to help start a meaningful conversation between parents and students about how the students will learn and grow throughout the school year.  Going back to the Beyond the Bake Sale ideas of parent engagement.

Well, I think I learned a lot this summer and I can’t wait to continue this coming Monday by teaching what I’ve learned, reflecting on the successes and failures, growing my strategies from what I learn, and repeating the process.

 

 

10 Skills for Successful School Leaders

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On Thursday, July 30 I was fortunate to participate in one day of Maryland’s Promising Principals Academy.  The Academy identifies and helps develop some of  Maryland’s most promising assistant principals (assistant principals from the entire state) for continued leadership within Maryland public schools.  Unfortunately, I was not selected by my school district to participate in the program, I am of course still a classroom teacher and not an assistant principal, but I am a member of the Maryland Association of Secondary School Principals, which is how I was afforded the opportunity to participate in the 10 Skills for Successful School Leaders workshop.

The workshop was 5 hours of reflection on 10 skills (identified by research compiled by NASSP, the National Association for School Principals) that successful school leaders identify in themselves and develop to help them better lead their schools.  We worked in small groups to unpack the ten skills (Setting Instructional Direction; Teamwork; Sensitivity; Judgement; Results Orientation; Organizational Ability; Oral Communication; Written Communication; Developing Others; and  Understanding Your Own Strengths & Weaknesses).

I enjoyed the entire day, as we focused on activities that unpacked the skills of Setting Instructional Direction, Teamwork, Judgment, and Understanding Your Own Strengths & Weaknesses.  My biggest takeaways came from our time with skill 10, Understanding Your Own Strengths & Weaknesses – Taking responsibility for improvement by actively pursuing developmental opportunities, and striving for continuous learning.  During our group discussion we talked about what a school looks like when the leadership does not understand or develop their strengths and weaknesses and the dominant thought was that you have a “leaderless” building because strong leaders are striving to improve.  When the leadership is not striving to improve they are not improving their schools and when they are not improving their school and simply maintaining the status quo there grows a disconnect between the leadership and staff.  Most teachers are trying to grow, but when they do not see their leadership attempting to grow there becomes a level of distrust.  One of the questions was how do you figure out your strengths and weaknesses?  A  solution was to provide a survey to staff and the community to see what they think the leaderships strengths and weaknesses are.  I think this is a great idea, but leaders have to be willing to receive the good with the bad and be willing to show that they are going to address both.  Since I do not have an entire staff and this activity gave me the idea of conducting surveys with my students and their families.  With students I want to get their feedback on my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and from the parents I want to find out my strengths and weaknesses as a communicator of what goes on in the classroom.  I have already developed a parent survey that I will send out quarterly to see if they are informed about the skills, content, and activities that their students are participating in.

I learned a lot about developing as an educational leader.  The 10  skills are not only great for principals, but most are applicable to classroom teachers as well.  There are many ways to develop each skill and just like I teach in the classroom, developing these skills is a process, a process that I am enjoying.

Please, come check us out.

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It is the middle of the summer, and I am getting myself pumped up about the upcoming school year.  I have put a lot of time and effort into reflecting on this last school year and finding ways to improve for the coming school year.  As I reflect I have thought about feedback and its importance in helping students grow as learners (see my last post), but not only do students need feedback to grow, teachers do too.  To be completely honest I don’t think that we get enough feedback from our peers or administrators to really create an environment of growth for the entire school.  I do receive feedback from my students, which helps me shape lessons to meet their needs in the form of formative assessments.   I also give the occasional reflective surveys to help the students reflect and to give me feedback on what they thought about different units, projects, teaching strategies, etc., but for my benefit I think those things can be more frequent to help me and my students.

To get back on track with this post, I want more feedback from my peers and other school leaders.  I’m not afraid to be observed.  All too often I hear colleagues stressing out about other teachers being in their classrooms or being observed by administrators.  Personally, I’m confident in my content knowledge, teaching style, lesson planning, and most importantly my connection with my students. So much so that I am more than happy to have anyone come into my classroom, observe, and provide feedback.

I do not think that we as educators observe each other enough.  Really, I don’t think we observe each other at all to learn something new or to provide feedback.  Is it a territorial thing?  Are we too prideful?  Are we afraid of showing our weaknesses?  Are we too busy and too caught up in our own little worlds to check out our peers?  I say yes to all of the above.  We have so many things competing for our time, how can we fit one more thing on our plates?  To that I say that it does not have to be an all the time thing.  It does not have to be an all class period thing.  A quick visit to a fellow teacher’s classroom could happen once a semester or quarter and be 5-10 minutes to check out a classroom procedure or an activity, then take 5 more minutes to write down your feedback and email it to your peer.  I want to get better.  I want more feedback from my peers and my administrators.  Yes it takes time and effort, but I think we owe it to one another.  So colleagues, please, come check my classroom out and tell me what you think. I want to get better and I know you can help me.

On an aside, I want to welcome all stakeholders into my classroom.  For the first time in my I had a parent come and spend an entire class period in the classroom.  I knew ahead of time that they were going to be spending the entire day with their student to get a sense of what a high school student goes through.  My lesson was a little unorthodox as we went outside to enjoy a late spring day before we completed a document analysis and explanatory writing assignment, but I think the parent appreciated that.  I shared my lesson plan, my thought process for the lesson and how it was built on skills we have developed throughout the year.  It felt really good to show off my lesson and I think the parent had a good time.  I love that that parent took the time to see life from the student perspective.  Hopefully they see the love that we teachers have for our students.