I left off the most important part of my last post, “First Principalship”.  I am calling out to my fellow educators and asking, “What advice do you have for a new principal”? 

I would love to hear from other administrators, teachers, parents, students and anyone else who comes across this post.  I look forward to hearing your insight!

First Principalship!

I am very excited to announce I have been named to my first principalship!  I have actually been on the job officially for 3 weeks.  Before the end of the school year I was working with the leadership team to begin preparations for the upcoming school year.  So while I am still new, I have been on the job for a couple of months.

To say the least, I am very excited for the upcoming school year.  The faculty and staff at my new school are wonderful.  I have had the chance to meet with about 50 teachers individually.  I enjoy spending time with them and getting to know them. 

We are having our first annual Summer Bar-B-Que in a few weeks and we are all looking forward to that as well.  It will be another opportunity for all of us to get together and continue getting to know one another.  It will be fun as all employees and their families are invited.

I will keep you posted as the year progresses!

Our school district has an annual summer conference.  It is called the Student Engagement conference and it is taking place today and tomorrow.  There is a ton of exciting sessions.  We heard Marc Pensky speak this morning.  He is a talented speaker with many great ideas.  This quote from him sums it all up.  I am paraphrasing from his keynote this morning.

We used to teach kids how to tell time by looking at the sun.  Now we have a machine (clock) that makes it much, much easier.  Now when teaching kids to tell time, we teach them how to read a watch. 

I thought this was a wonderful point.  Many educators are hesitant to embrace new technologies for the fear of abandoning the traditional way.  I do not think we can afford to block new technologies as this is what our kids will be expected to know in the future.  We did it with watches, so we can do it now!   I am off to a session on teacher conferencing.

Our state testing is officially over today!  Well, not including make up administration but one can dream.  Tomorrow we are having a special event at our school.  It is in conjunction with The American Cancer Society.

Our school has been involved with The Relay For Life for the past three years.  At my previous school we had been involved for the past 6 or 7 years.  I am a true believer in teaching children the importance of giving back to those in need.  It is just the right thing to do. I also have a personal buy in to fighting cancer.  My wonderful mom lost her long battle against this horroible disease this Feburary. 

Our school is holding our Mini-Relay tomorrow afternoon.  It is a scaled down version of the actual Relay.  We participate in that one as well, but this gives all of our kids to participate.  We want them to experience it as well.  Each child is required to get at least $5 in donations to be able to attend.  This may sound like a lot from every kid, but we work with them and give them plenty of time to gather the donations.  Many teachers help support thier students and everyone who wants to attend is allowed. 

We decorate our track with purple Relay balloons, informative signs from the ACS and anything else we can find.  We have food and drink tents (we give each child a soda and an ACS cup filled with popcorn (all donated).  This year we will have a dunking booth, snow cone machine and face painting.  We will charge $1 for these.  And yes, I WILL be in the dunking booth!!  Hey, its to fight cancer!

I encourage any school to look into this type of event.  It teaches kids to give back and care about others in their community.  It helps them grow.  It helps your community.  You will even probably get a nice article in the paper!  It shows your community that your school cares and does wonderful things.  In addition to all of this, it provides donations for a worthy cause.  If this is something you might be interested in, I encourage you to email me or contact the ACS at ww. cancer.org. 

It has been a bit since I posted as we are all feeling the rush of the end of the school year happenings!  We received our numerous boxes of our state assessment materials today.  Our students will have the chance to show what they learned this year.  Our teachers have done a wonderful job this year in preparing our students.  We have focused on the data, although we will continue to refine this process in the future.  I previously posted on using data and I encourage you to check it out if you have not had a chance to read it.

At this point I just try to boost the kid’s confidence.  I remind them daily of how much they have grown academically this year and now they will have the chance to prove it on paper.  I know most of my teachers will be reviewing the standards over the next few days, but it is impossible to cram at this point.  I think the reviews are a good idea but at this point I think a healthy dose of encouragement and confidence building are more effective.

Here are some of my specific strategies:

Talk up the upcoming test with the students, but be careful not to stress them out!  You can often hear me in the hallways reminding the kids and telling them how ready they are!

Meet with kids individually or in small groups.  This takes some time but it can be done formally or simply by pulling them aside on the way to lunch.  I use this time to talk about their year and how they feel about their academic performance. 

At my school we are going to use incentives for attendance.  I know there is a tremendous amount of debate on the merits of incentives, but it works for us at our school.

Make sure the teachers are preparing the students for the testing “conditions”.  We actually do this all year as we feel the more experience they have in testing environments the more comfortable they will be on the big day!

Here are a few of the strategies I use for last minute preparation.  What are you doing at your school?

This is a slide deck I prepared for the South Carolina Middle School Association.  It is not by any means perfect, but it is a big improvement from my previous powerpoint presentations.  The presentation went well and hopefully I inspired a few new bloggers out there!

I have been trying to get the slideshow to appear on my blog.  I have not been able to, but if you click here, you can see it on Middle View. 

One of the big obstacles schools face is community and parental involvement.  Sometimes it is easy–drive by your local high school on a Friday night.  Depending on where you live, you may see the entire town (or close to it) at the school.  There is excitement in the air and everyone is pumped up about your school.  This is to easy!  However, we know why the people are there. 

Sometimes the crowd gathers in the school auditorium.  Once again there is excitement in the air and everyone is there to see the hard work of the students.  Hours and hours have been spent rehearsing for the gathering.  The work has been done and the playbills are ready for distribution.  Wow, it is really easy to get families in our schools!

There are many examples where we are successful at bringing the community and families into our schools.  However, we all know the previous examples deal with athletics and the arts.  These are important functions of schools and are worthy programs.  Once the crowd leaves and the administrative staff is ready to head home their thoughts turn to the next evening.  Science Night!  Experiments are planned and there is even a guest speaker from the prestigious university.  The crowd should be huge!

The following evening rolls around and Science Night is set to begin. The anticipated reality then sets in.  There are only a handful of families in attendance.  The same can be seen at School Improvement Council meetings, PTA meetings, Curriculum Nights and the list continues.  Apparently, we have the ability to get families in our school (see first two examples) but it is the rare exception rather than the norm.  How can we increase attendance at ALL of our school events?

Publicize, Publicize, Publicize

If you are having an event at your school, you need to work extra hard in getting the word out.  Simply putting it in a newsletter and on the school marquee is not enough.  Advertise in the local paper. Post it on your school blog (you have one, right?).  Most importantly, reach out to your community!  Go to the places your community goes.  Post a flyer at the local grocery store.  The local restaurants often have community message boards.  What about the dry cleaners?  Everyone has to get their hair done or cut.  I am sure the salon would allow you to post your information.  Local churches?  Gas stations?

Truly Welcome Them In

Many people are intimidated by schools.  We are not always the most welcoming places.  We need to work to change that perception.  If the only time a parent hears from us is when their child is in trouble, why would they want to visit us?  Connect with the community and families often.  We must spread our good news because if we do not, who will?  And of course, a free meal never hurts!
Read the rest of this entry »

Powerpoint

blogging-for-administrators.ppt

Are we doing enough to prepare our future middle schoolers?  

The data are clear.  The implications are clear.  The consequences are clear.  However, I must ask a profound question–are we even listening?  Research shows that early childhood education is vital for children.  If a young child starts out behind educationally it will be tough for them to catch up to their peers.  I know there are a variety of options for pre kindegarten education.  They range from in home experiences to more formal pre-schools.  Which ones are best?  We will save that debate for another time or forum, but are we placing true importance on early childhood education? 

My mother was a pre school teacher for nearly 20 years.  She recently passed away and I have been thinking about her profession.  She had a college education, in the field of education, and always attended different professionl development workshops.  She did a wonderful job with her students who often came back 15 years later to thank her.  She taught children the building blocks they needed for future success.  She worked hard to instill a joy of learning in her kids.  She was a true professional and hero for many, many kids.  However, if you looked at her paycheck, did it match what she was doing?  Were there any curriculum coaches for her to confer with?  What support was there for her?  In spite of this, my mother created positive learning experiences for all of her children.  Her students were well prepared for kindegarten.  Unfortunately, not all of the children out there will be lucky enough to have the chance to have a teacher like my mother was.

I know we talk about the importance of early childhood education.  Some children have excellent learning opportunities in thier own home.  They will be prepared for school, possibly from this alone.  Most of these same children will also attend some type of formal pre-school.  This pre-school may have terrific teachers and a wonderful facility with all of the latest technoogy.  I would be willing to say these children are entering public schools well ahead of the game.  However, as we all know not all children will have these opportunities.

Many children receive little or no experiences in their home that will prepare them for kindegarten.  This is due to several reasons.  Maybe the parents work two jobs and are struggling to survive.  Whatever the case is, the child is suffering.  Some of these children will be placed in a preschool as well.  However, due to cost, their school may not be up to par.  These students are often going to enter kindegarten behind thier peers.  Once behind academically, it is tough to catch up.  We need to do something more to allow ALL children to receive the education they need before entering kindegarten.

Consider the following information that displays the disparities our children are up against:

Number of words heard at home per hour by 1- and 2-year-olds learning to talk:

• low-income child 620
• middle-income child 1,250 
• high-income child 2,150

Number of words heard by age 3:

• low-income child 10 million 
• middle-income child 20 million
• high-income child 30 million

More than 40 families were observed over several years to study how, and how often, parents talk with children. Researchers found a tremendous variety in the amount of words spoken to children in the first three years of life and in the quality of feedback they received. These verbal interactions with adults are major predictors of how prepared children will be to succeed in school.

While family income was highly related to levels of children’s language exposure, the relationship was not absolute. Some middle-income families behaved more like high-income families, preparing their children for higher achievement through vocabulary development and other language skills. Other middle-income families behaved more like low-income families, with a paucity of language exposure for children.

An average child growing up in a low-income family receiving welfare hears one-half to one-third as many spoken words as children in more affluent households. At these rates the low-income child would know about 3,000 words by age 6, while the child of the high-income family would have a vocabulary of 20,000 words. To provide the low-income child with weekly language experience equal to that of a child from a middle-income family, it would require 41 hours per week of out-of-home word exposure as rich as those heard by the most affluent children.

Source: Hart & Risley, 1995. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young Children

As I stated earlier, we all know the importance of early childhood education.  However, can we really be surprised at the woefully unequal distribution of services to our kids?  Most pre-school teachers receive far, far below what they are worth.  At $10 per hour we are asking teachers to give our young children what they need to succeed in life.  Is that fair to the teacher?  On the other hand, pre-schoool can be outragously expensive.  I used to live in Florida and the going rate was anywhere form $225 per week and up per child.  We want better paid preschool teachers but can barely afford the current tuition!  Using the pay scale of pre-school teachers, college proessors should be making about the same as they are.  I know I paid less while earning my bachelors degree than parents do while their youngsters learn their ABC’s!

I am not an expert in early childhood education.  However, I know something needs to be done.  We need to pay more attention.  We need to allot more funds to it.  This is tricky since many pre-schools are privately owned, but it needs to be explored.  I know some states offer universal pre-k and I think that is a wonderful start.  But what about 1, 2 and 3 year olds.  I think we spend a tremendous amount of money trying to reform high schools and middle schools, but maybe we need to start earlier.

Ugh!  I am having dificulties getting the pictures for my last post on data to appear on Ed LeaderWeb.  However, I cross posted the article on Middle View.  Please feel free to click on over there to see what we created!