LeaderTalk

Isaac got in between his mom and her boyfriend when they were fighting and caught the flying coffee pot right on the corner of his cheekbone. Even through the stitches he refused to cry.

Systems are not overrated, not by a long shot. When I took over as principal at a junior high school after nine years at an elementary school, there were virtually no systems, rituals, or routines in place; in other words, very little structure and an awful lot of chaos. Students used (more like abused) cell phones, iPods, and other electronics all day while teachers put on blinders. There were daily brawls, blatant gang activity, and worst of all, declining student achievement and a very serious gap.

For two decades, I have sought to help students find their way as readers and writers. As I reflect back on the years I spend as a classroom teacher, reading specialist, and later University professor, I fed my students a steady diet of fiction text. I touched on nonfiction when we had a topic to research or a problem to solve, but I cautiously shied away. I had great confidence and passion for literature, and understood how to make fiction come alive. I had little personal confidence in how to help them find their way in the complex world of information.

The social media phenomenon continues to bring interactivity to the mainstream and lead more and more people into a connected world.

The 2010-2011 school year is upon us, and with it comes many new teachers who are excited to enlighten the minds of students who will sit before them for the next 10 months.

School leaders often complain about being judged by their standardized test scores. This is a fair complaint since these scores don't tell the whole picture. But instead of creating their own scorecard for their school, these leaders simply complain. Stop complaining and start keeping score.

It has been a while since my last contribution. If that sounds to some like the opening line of confession.... perhaps it is.

When a colleague, Daryll Powell, and I conduct workshops for teacher leaders and school principals, we frequently ask participants, "Why did you go into teaching?" This question led to many serious discussions on the values, goals, and aspirations on their decision to go into teaching. (To be fair, we also ask a second question to school executives, but that is another post).

Condense it, consolidate it, and give us principals only what we need...the concepts. Expand it, expound on it, and give the teachers what they need...the training. I am writing this article sitting in AVID training in beautiful San Diego on Thursday, the fourth (and not final) day of the training, during the first week of August. I honestly could have left after Tuesday. I learned the concepts I need to know to recognize effective AVID teaching in my building, and I have received more than enough written material to keep me well informed during the year. And I am in the administrators' strand. What I don't need right now are all the nitty gritty details (and fluff) while my building is not yet fully staffed, I have 15 unopened boxes of stuff from my former school sitting in the middle of my new office, and emails up the wazoo about what I should really be attending to at the building right now. Believe me, I am all for staff development. But please, make it relevant, timely and to the point. Please, think about offering conference strands on a principal's timeline. Being away from the building is costly and inconvenient, yet we need to be up on all the latest initiatives. As a new middle school principal I have a steep learning curve that includes not just AVID, but IB, DL, 5ES, WTL, and PBIS, to name a few acronyms of our middle school initiatives. I can't spend my life in training, but I do need to spend quality time learning the concepts.

The discussion about web filtering in schools has been going on for quite some time. These powerful conversations have pushed thinking and ignited important dialogue as we consider the level and depth of filtering required and/or necessary to meet the learning needs of our students. 

In my last post on my blog I was pondering the opening day that will soon arrive and what it will look like. George Corous posted his thoughts about the first day with teachers and the importance of giving them time. In my response to George, I mentioned that time is precious, like water in the desert.

It was last year around this time that I talked about the start of meeting season. 

For five years I have been espousing the importance of embedding the use of technology, and more importantly, 21st century skills into my teachers' lesson planning and instruction. I have incorporated the use of such web 2.0 tools as blogs, wikis, digital storytelling, and Google Docs into my own professional practices, and I have modeled these tools for teachers.

Our last article had to do with the new kind of assessment that we are starting to see in education and how this could really be a harbinger of things to come where the US starts to catch up with more appropriate assessment for the 21st century. This article will deal with another major obstacle in US education, which is summer vacation.