A colleague of mine and I will be presenting a session on using technology to increase your professional and personal productivity to a large group of principals at the SCASA middle level conference in a few weeks. I am a “heavy” user of technology and know how beneficial it has been to me over the past few years.
The group will have a very wide range of technological backgrounds. Some of the principals are proficient in many technologies and some have very limited experience. I want to somehow appeal t each and everyone n the audience. The presentation will be about two hours.
What should we include in our presentation? I know I would like to start off with a poll everywhere demonstration. Here are some ideas we have so far:
poll everywhere
twitter - for developing a PLN and for school communication
podcasting
What do you think we should include?
Has Anything Changed?
I was going to post this entry 2 years ago. I put it together and saved it without ever publishing it. I was sorting through my admin. panel this evening and happened upon it. It was an article about cell phones from Jan. 2008. Clearly, we know there are many advantages to using cell phones in the classroom. However, I wonder if we have come very far in actual implementation over the past 2 years?
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Many schools are forced to spend a lot of time on cell phones. Here is an article out of N.Y. Maybe if there was a more widespread use of cell phones as learning tools, they would be more accepted at school.
Confusion Over New York
Cellphone Ban in Schools
From - http://www.cellular-news.com/story/28376.php
Students returning to school this week in New York face a dilemma over what to do with their mobile phones when they enter the school property. Under a City Council law passed last September, pupils are allowed to carry phones with them on their journey to school - but not to then carry the phone into the school, causing confusion at the school gates. Plans by some schools to set up secure lockers for the mobile phones have been delayed by at least a year.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” Lashea Suggs, a pupil at the Young Women’s Leadership School told the local New York Post. “How can you bring your phone to school and have nowhere to put it when you get to school?”
City mayor, Michael Bloomberg imposed a ban in 2006 after he introduced metal detectors at some schools to help cut down on knife crime - and mobile phones were amongst the items confiscated. Responding to parent pressure who said that mobile phones were essential for safety reasons, the city council passed the new law which was aimed at forcing the Department of Education to find a solution to allowing children to be near their phone, without disrupting school lessons.
Enterprising local retailers have seized the opportunity caused by the confusion and for a charge will store a students mobile phone for them during the day - allowing them to collect the phone when they are heading home again.
There is a legal challenge to the ban - but it wont be heard until next month at the earliest.
Posted to the site on 3rd January 2008
I wrote this article a few years ago when I was an assistant principal. I am currently serving on the NASSP A.P. task force. I thought I would re-post this article to shine the light on one of the most challenging positions in education. I hope you enjoy!
One of the most important roles in a school is that of the assistant principal. (Disclaimer: I am currently an assistant principal, so these may be a bit biased!). The duties of the assistant principal are wide ranging and quickly changing. The job has always entailed student discipline and supervision as well as other managerial tasks such as bus duty, scheduling, event coverage, “key keeper” and so on. However, assistant principals are asked to delve more and more into curriculum and improving student achievement.
Most assistant principals welcome this new requirement. I have never pulled into the school parking lot excited about bus duty or making sure all of the doors are locked during an emergency drill. I am quite certain most of my colleagues feel the same way. I am an assistant principal so I can impact students. I want to increase student achievement and allow each and every child to be the best they can be. I want to be an instructional leader. I want to gather and analyze data to improve instruction. I want to build relationships with kids so they have another person looking after them and encouraging them through the tough times we call school. I want to work with other adults collaboratively in the best interest of kids.
Many, if not all, assistant principals do these things. We know it is expected of us and we enjoy doing it. We know it is in the best interest of the students. However, many assistant principals struggle to find a way to balance the time demands of being an instructional leader and a manager.
I do not always want to do bus duty. I do not particularly want to sort the bins of testing materials for the state assessment. However, I know these are parts of my job and I always complete them with the most diligence and professionalism. All of this presents an issue. How can an assistant principal use the time afforded to “manage” the school and still be the instructional leader that he/she wants to be?
The National Association of Secondary Schools Principals recently selected 15 administrators for a task force on the assistant principalship. I was honored to be one of those selected. We will be spending a lot of time on defining the role of the assistant principal. I am truly excited to be part of the task force and eagerly look forward to working with colleagues from across the nation.
Assistant principals were stretched on time before the accountability aged rolled in. Taking care of the nuts and bolts of school operation takes a tremendous amount of time. What are some of the ways an assistant principal can complete both managerial type duties with more instructional focused ones?
I have worked directly with 9 or 10 different assistant principals during my time as a school administrator. All of us have aspirations to be a building principal. Two of them have already been promoted to lead their own school. We realize that to prepare ourselves for our future role, we need to be the strongest instructional leaders. Handling referrals are one thing, but if we are ever to be entrusted to run our own school, we know we have to stand out from the crowd. We decided to develop procedures to give ourselves time for the instructional duties we wanted to perform.
At my last high school we made a fundamental change to how we handled student discipline. Previously, we were each assigned a part of the alphabet and if one of our students received a referral, we handled it. We often found ourselves in the office for a good part of the day. One of my colleagues came up with a great plan. Our school was rather large and there were 5 assistant principals. Instead of handling student discipline via the alphabet we created a schedule that allowed us to be out of the office for 3 full days a week (sometimes even 4 days!). Two administrators were assigned to discipline each day. When you had discipline duty, you were often handling referrals all day. This kept you tied to the office, but it created much more time during a given week to observe classes, work with data, and do the things we really want to do. A positive unintended side effect was that referrals were handled much quicker as well.
At my current middle school we have 3 assistant principals. We handle student referrals for our grade level. I have tried to implement a few procedures to use my time as efficiently as possible. I always make it a point to handle referrals as quickly as possible. I think the teachers enjoy this and it is better for the students. If a student misbehaves in class and three days later I ask why they did what they did, I will usually get a look of confusion. Maybe they are trying to get out of trouble, but three days to a middle school child is similar to how I feel watching my beloved Dolphins this year (for the non-football fans, the Dolphins are 0-11!).
I try to schedule a time each day to handle student discipline issues. The 7th grade students attend their elective classes the last two periods of the day. I generally handle referrals during this time. It keeps them in their core classes as much as possible. However, I am a true believer in the benefits of the arts, so I am not so sure this is the best plan possible. Of course, some incidents require immediate attention and these are handled as they arise. At my school, most of the incidents seem to occur outside of class. I make an attempt to be as visible as possible during class change. Hopefully, this is preventing some incidents before they occur.
If you surveyed assistant principals, I think the number one issue would be finding time to be an instructional leader in light of our other responsibilities. I would also predict that these instructional duties are why just about all of us chose this profession. I hope serving on the task force will allow me to learn from others on how they manage their time.
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 too 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, 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 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/Math/Literacy 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!
What about the parents who work during the evening? If a parent works second shift, are we catering to their needs? If everything is planned for after school, when can they participate? I do not think we are going to plan anything that starts at
Engage Them
We work hard to create programs and courses that will engage our students. We need to focus this same energy on our efforts to bring the community to our schools. If we are fortunate to get them in the door, we better show them an exciting time! Some events are more inclined to engage the audience, but we must make every effort to engage them no matter the reason for their visit. We expect the same from all of our teachers, regardless of the course they teach.
Feedback
Sometimes what we think may be important and exciting does not resonate with our community or families. We need to know what they think. Exit slips are an easy way to gather this data. Once they are there, find out what they liked. We need to focus on our customers. This also needs to be done before events are planed as well. Surveys are an easy way to gauge interest. These can be sent home with all of the forms that need to be filled out at the beginning of the year.
We all know how challenging it is to get genuine community/family involvement at our schools. However, it can be done. We need to reach out to our families. We can no longer (could we really ever?) expect the families to show up simply because we plan something. We need to make sure our schools are inviting places. We need to go the extra mile in getting the word out to the community. Just as we expect from our teachers, we need to engage them once they arrive. Is it easy? Of course not. Is it worth the effort? I think we all know the answer to that question.
On one of my favorite blogs to read, by Donalyn Miller, talks about a letter she sent home to parents about reading. I encourage you to take a moment and take a look. Kudos to the Book Whisperer!
This part of the literacy series is going to focus on different literacy “programs”. I put the word in quotes because I am not against programs per se, but I really believe the most important aspect of a literacy program is simply letting the kids read. I am not suggesting we simply tell the kids to pick a book and read. There is so much more: getting to know what kids like to read, promoting books, making reading exciting, dedicating the time to reading, setting up reading workshops, making reading “cool”, and on and on.
The best aspect of the things above is they are free. The only expense, and it can be large, is creating your classroom library (see earlier post). There are also a great deal of reading strategies that can be accessed for free on the web. I would suggest starting with this list linked above. However, today I want to talk about the programs already out there for purchase.
Our school started using Plugged In To Reading this year. We have been very pleased with the program. Our teachers seem to love it and are using it widely. The best part of Plugged In is that it offers the teacher a wide variety of strategies from which to choose. The teacher is still the central figure in the deployment. It is not a scripted step by step program and takes a lot of teacher insight. The best part is it gets kids reading.
This fits in with my philosophy above–we first need to get the kids to read and work to develop a love of reading in them. Another great aspect of Plugged In is that it gives you a huge assortment of both fiction and non fiction books that are mostly high interest. Some of our classes have made huge strides so far and I am excited to see how that plays out at the end of the year.
We also have Compass. Compass is a computer based program that focuses on the specific needs of each student. The program automatically uses the students MAP data and tailors an instructional experience for them. This is a pretty powerful program that can be used for both math and reading. It truly makes it a data driven approach. Compass is more “self-sufficient” than Plugged In, but if you have a good teacher running it, you will get even better results.
Finally, related to the above information we are giving our kids a heavy dose of SSR. We are wroking to build their reading stamina which requires us to allow them to read in school!
What programs are you using in your school? Read 180? SSRA? Are they commercial programs or ones you have created on your own at at your school level? Please feel free to share.
Great link to a book trailer site
Here is an old African Proverb I love:
“Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle… when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
How does this relate to our profession of moving schools forward?
Have you checked out the Principal Difference blog by NASSP principal Mel Riddle? It contains a wealth of information on literacy from the principals perspective. His last post contained a link to an intriguing article.
Brains can be “molded”
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09344/1019898-115.stm
This article speaks of a study conducted by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. I highly encourage you to read the article. It basically states that when students are given intensive reading instruction, their brain actually changes. Those who are proponents of critical literacy programs, always “kind of” knew this, but it is nice to see the science that backs it up.
I sent this article to my staff late today. I plan on discussing it at our leadership meeting Monday morning. I think it has major implications and gives incredible support to a literacy program. It gives the proof that all students can learn.
All students
I actually use the term all students will learn. I think when we say they can learn, we leave it up in the air. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I think it is vital that we express this as all students WILL learn. It is the least we owe them. We are currently modifying our second semester remediation plan.
One of the keys to our success, is supplying the time for reading at our school. We are constantly working on reading strategies (pre, during and post) and following the research on all things literacy. We use Kelley Gallager’s approach of not under teaching yet not over teaching reading as well. The first step in this process has been getting books in the hands of kids. We know how important the strategies are, especially for non-readers, but we feel the first step is developing or re-developing, the love of reading.
What are you doing at your school to increase reading achievement?
What have been your road blocks?
We often spend so much time teaching reading , tracking progress and the like and we sometimes forget a major responsibility of ours: teaching children the love of reading. The skills that go along with reading are crucial, we need to teach that, but we also need to foster a love of reading. It is a fine line-over teaching and under teaching reading. We want to avoid both. Here are some ideas on developing a love of reading in your students (which, in my opinion, will lead to academic gains in all subject areas).
3 key components
Provide Choice
Provide Time
Provide Access to Books
Choice
Reluctant readers are often confused by free reign choice. For many students we will need to provide some guidance. One idea would be to make an acceptable list of books you select. This will give them choice, but within your set parameters. You can also build a classroom library with books that you approve. You can conduct book passes, create student book reviews, and on and on.
Students often do not know their reading level? Do you know your reading level? I have no idea what my reading level is! There are numerous ways to gauge reading level and then offer appropriate books. You can use lexile scores ( http://www.lexile.com/) or use websites such as http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/search.
How can I tell if they are reading if they have a choice in book rather than a whole class novel? How can I manage?
I think this is not an either or preposition. I would certainly recommend keeping large group reading assignments, but I think choice should be offered as well. Have students do book talks, book chats, character summaries, book store sales pitches, etc… Remember, choice reading is to harness the love of reading.
Provide Time
This is tough–we are already have to cover so much! Many schools have reading time built into their schedule. This is sometimes done in home room or a similar period. Some schools block off a reading period each day. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this school wide. However, how can you do this in your class? I would say start small–maybe a period here and there. Maybe the first ten minutes of class. Who knows you may really like it and it can grow from there. Check out this helpful resource. If we all incorporate reading into our class routine, our kids will get the reccomended odse of 90 minutes of reading a day.
http://www.angelastockman.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/beginningrws.pdf
Access to Books
Books can get expensive but there are a number of ways to build your classroom library. Every room should have a classroom library. The Friends of York county hold a sale or two each year where you can get books dirt cheap. The scholastic warehouse book sale is right around the corner. You can really stock up there. You can ask students to donate used books. Here is another idea:
“Host a read-a-thon after school, and invite kids to bring books, blankets, pillows, and snacks. Play some music, play some games, and invite fellow teachers to read or perform excerpts from their favorite books. Give away some great door prizes and throw in a pizza or two. Kids will come, and when they do, ask them to donate a book from a wish-list of titles generated by teachers and students in lieu of an entrance fee.”
Ask students to donate books. Use some of your school issued money or state money to purchase books. Also, remember we have a great library full of books.
You can use sites like
http://www.angelamaiers.com/2008/09/books-for-free.html
Once you have these in place you are ready to really start developing the love of reading in our students. But, of course, it does not stop there. This is your chance to start talking about books, asking students about books, make connections between authors, genres, etc…Students should be discussing books, sharing insights and more.
I noticed a student walking home the other day reading a book. He was walking on the sidewalk by the track, but fully engrossed in his book. I am not sure this is very safe, but he is obviously a reader. I think we would all LOVE to see all of the kids doing this. It would be great to see students in the hallways with their books, walking home with their books, catching a few minutes to read in the lunch room, etc…Every day when kids pass me on the way home I remind them to get theri reading in tonight. Please do the same. The more they hear it, the more likely the will listen!
We need to build a community of readers where literacy is built into everything we do.
I am a middle school principal.
As I continually reflect on my craft, one of the recurring questions is, “Am I doing all I can to encourage my teachers, counselors and administrators to excel in their position or I am I somehow holding them back”?
Of course, I am trying to support everyone in my building to allow them to grow and flourish. I continually give anonymous surveys to my staff so I can monitor this.
Here is my question to you:
What can principals do to allow their faculty and staff to flourish and what well intended things holds one back? (Of course, I am not looking for names, etc…I just want to know what I can do and what to watch out for!)
