Reflections from an Elementary School Principal

A call for help...

2012-01-28T10:22:00.001-08:00

In my recent post reflecting on my goals, I shared that one of my goals is to act more like an Instructional Coach than a Supervisor when observing classrooms and providing teachers with feedback. I mentioned this to a member of my Twitter PLN (also co-moderator of the #Educoach twitter chat), Kathy Perret, and she was very interested in this concept.

It has become an idea that we have decided to collaboratively pursue continuing to research and hopefully publish our learning on the concept. But here's where we need your help. If you are a principal or a teacher, please take our surveys. If you know a principal or a teacher, please pass the survey (or this post) on to them. We greatly appreciate your help!

Click on your role for the appropriate survey:

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Reflecting on my goals with staff

2012-01-26T20:45:00.000-08:00

Just sharing the Friday Focus post from my Staff Memo blog this week:

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At our Professional Learning Meeting this week I asked you to open up to the front of your Reflection Journals and take 5 minutes to reflect on the goals (2 professional and 1 personal) that you wrote at the beginning of the school year. For this week's Friday Focus, I'm going to put myself "out there" and share my personal reflections on the goals I wrote in my journal for this year (Wondering why I'm sharing this with you? See #1 below...feel free to skip reading this if you're not really interested in my goals).

Professional Goal #1: To model reflection of my professional growth and encourage staff to reflect as well.

One of the most important things any educator can do is reflect on their practice. Great teachers know that you can't just teach the same lessons every year, because your students change. Great teachers often don't follow their lesson plans as written throughout the week, because they are constantly reflecting on how their students responded to the instruction and adapting their plans to their students' needs. Unfortunately, our daily schedules leave us with very little time to reflect...many of us are happy if we can get in 1 personal bathroom break and get our lunch down in just 5 minutes. Despite the challenge of time (that is a challenge for almost anything we want to accomplish), reflection is the key to progress.

"Reflection is the beginning of reform." ~Mark Twain

Reflecting on my goal of reflecting...I have been using my Friday Focus as a means to share my reflections with you each week and also shared the link to my personal/professional blog where I also share my reflections. While blogging sounds quite scary (and I must admit I was hesitant to even share that link with you all), it has become one of my best tools for reflection. If you know me, I cannot write much by hand and prefer to type. In addition, I have quite a high following of other educators on my professional blog that I have gained a great deal of feedback on to help challenge my thinking and gain new ideas.

I had planned on giving staff time to write in reflection journals at the end of each of our professional learning meetings, however, I know that this is something I have forgotten a few times (I will also tell you that closure was one of my weakest areas in the classroom). I loved the idea that someone added in response to this blog of adding a reflection question for you all in my Friday Focus posts and am trying to remember to do that to encourage your reflection as well.

Professional Goal #2: To act more like an instructional coach than a "supervisor"

Before I made the crazy "leap" into administration I worked for one year as an Instructional Coach and absolutely loved it. I loved the time I spent observing teachers, helping them to reflect, planning with them, co-teaching a lesson, etc. During my years here as principal, I have focused on improving my practice of getting into classrooms as much as possible to provide teachers with feedback. Over the past year, I have come to realize how important it is not only to just give you my feedback, but to have conversations with you as an Instructional Coach does.

An Instructional Coach's role is to improve instruction and I don't see my role any differently (I just also happen to have many other duties to fulfill as well). I reflected in a previous post about my classroom visits here and am continuing to find that it is very difficult to find time to talk with teachers after visits and I have to resort to emailing quite often. I am happy to see from my data that I have increased my rate of feedback from 48% to 77% (meaning that for all of my classroom visits since the start of the year I have either given verbal or email feedback 77% of the time):

Feedback rates at the start of October

Feedback rates up until now

Another challenge I have found in my goal of acting more like a coach than a supervisor is that it is hard for some to separate the “evaluator” hat that I do ultimately “wear” as a principal. In a recent chat on twitter on the roles/similarities of coaches and principals, someone asked “How can a principal act as a coach?”

My tweeted response was:

Personal Goal: To make time for myself (reading for pleasure and to exercise 3 times a week)
Well, I already shared with you my reflections on exercise in our staff meeting (I really need to start joining those after school Zumba and pickleball sessions)! I made reading for pleasure a goal, because I often just read professional books and forget that I really enjoy reading for pleasure. I definitely have been doing better with this, however, when I recently told a group of 5th graders that I read 26 books in 2011 they told me “that’s nothing, we read WAY more than that!”

Now, since I just got quite personal with you all, I'm going to resort to one of my coping mechanisms of humor (in the form of an image):

My reflection prompt for you:

If you didn't get the chance to reflect on all of your goals this week, do it NOW!!!

Web 2.0 How do I love you? Let me count the ways...

2012-01-14T05:27:00.000-08:00

1. Twitter -Do I really need to explain twitter? Let's just say I couldn't imagine my life without twitter! This is where I learn about how any other tools can help me both personally and professionally.

2. Blogging-I keep this blog for my reflections and professional growth and also maintain a blog for my staff.

3. Google Docs-I love how easy it is to have others contribute to a document or ask someone to review something I've written before submitting it. No more emailing an attachments back and forth. No more losing a document in microsoft word when your computer auto-closes it before saving (google docs auto-saves every few seconds).
Here is a great video clip to see how beneficial google docs can be in your school:

4. Google calendar-this is the first year I've used google calendar and find it extremely useful for my useful for my secretaries to have access to my calendar-they can always see where I'm at and add new appointments to my calendar. Recently after having an issue with our computer lab sign-up on our internal network, we set up a google calendar for staff to sign up this way...for many of our staff it's their first time activating their google account and I'm hopeful that it will lead to many more uses of google apps in our building. My next goal is also for us to create an IEP calendar in our district o we make sure that there are not 2 mtgs scheduled at once that LEA representatives need to be at.

5. Google reader-I love reading blogs online and I no longer have to waste my time checking my favorite blog sites to see if there's a new post...they go straight to my google reader and I check it when I want to see what's in there. Here's a video clip I shared with staff when I showed them google reader at our Tech Tuesday:

5. Diigo -I love that I can access and add to my favorites no matter what device I'm using online. I also enjoy that i can just have the "autobots" search my tags within diigo to find what I'm looking for. There are many features of diigo that I haven't begun to use yet, sharing them in a group for example.

6. Evernote -after having an incident of losing everything in my yellow notepad on my iPad I have become an all the time Evernote user. If you don't have an iPad, you can still use evernote on your computer. It's "in the cloud" so you can access it from any device! I love that's I can organize my notes in notebooks, label them with multiple tags and that I can access the on any device. I recently learned that Evernote has a voice feature that is useful in the classroom, because the teacher could record a student reading, take notes and save it for that student's portfolio or even email the recording with a message to the parents!

7. Pinterest -this has become a new addiction that one of my teachers discovered. Basically Pinterest is a way to search for ideas, but you're just searching on others' bulletin boards and you then create your own bulletin boards of ideas. The teacher that shared this with me said she basically never uses google anymore when she's looking for an idea.

8. Podcasts-I love being able to learn from podcasts while I'm cleaning the house or working out and I have also enjoyed joining in on podcasts recording within the past year. You can find my list of podcasts here.

9. TodaysMeet is basically a chat room you can create and invite anyone in by giving them the link. I recently used this in a staff mtg as a back channel to foster more discussion.

10. Skype - I love to use this for personal and professional use

11. Google + I rarely go to Google +, however, the hangout feature is just like skype, but allows up to 10 people to join for free. There has been a regular group of us in my twitter PLN that organize times to meet in google +hangout (we've discussed the start of the school year, walkthroughs, use of evernote, etc.)

12. Facebook - I pretty much only use facebook to keep in touch with family/friends since we live out of state. I use this to post pictures of my kids so Grandma can still feel connected (it's far easier for me than emailing them out to people).

13. The Principal Center is a new online place for Principals started by Justin Baeder to join for sharing ideas and resources. This month I'm starting a book study there with several other principals. If you want to join, just let me know and I'll send you an invite (you do have to go through a process to verify that you are an administrator).

14. Screencastomatic - I have found it very easy to make quick tutorials that show staff exactly how to do something. No more screenshots/editing to make a handout that gets lost. The screencast stays on my blog and youtube channel for them to access as needed.

15. YouTube - I use YouTube for school video clips and for Screencasts. Last year we were fortunate enough to have a young lady from another country visiting her grandmother over the summer and attended our summer school program. She recently saw our summer school video clip and commented on it that she can't wait to come back to America and join us again this year!

16. Xtranomral -I have not used this, but I certainly love watching what others have made, especially what some of our 4th graders made that you can find here. I have also found some to start out a staff meeting with humor (like a funny one about parent teacher conferences).

17. Bitly.com I love using bitly to shorten web links and to customize them so they aren't just a random assortment of letters/numbers. Here's a screencast I made to show my staff how to use it:

18. Shelfari - I used to use Goodreads to log my books and connect with others that have similar reading interests and find book suggestions, but I wanted to add a "widget" to my blog that shows the most recent books I've read. This isn't to brag (which my husband usually says), but it's actually after attending a conference with Regie Routman---she says it is important for teachers to share with students about themselves as readers and for principals to do the same for their staff. I thought the easiest way would be to have this on my staff blog for when they check my Monday Memo and Friday Focus each week. You can see that it is also on this blog.

19. Pandora - I'm the type of person that needs music to work, so I love being able to access my Pandora account and pick my station (especially since we don't get a radio signal in our school building).

I'm sure that I missed some tool, but as I went through my week, these are the tools I used that help me do my job and continue my learning.

New Year's Reflections, not New Year's Resolutions

2011-12-31T06:38:00.000-08:00

Why wait for the New Year to make your resolutions or goals?

Maybe the New Year holiday has been changed for me thanks to being in education and that I get excited for each new year that starts in school on September 1st, but I just don't see the New Year on January 1st as reason to start making resolutions for the new year. If you are a lifelong learner and committed to your profession, then you should always have a set of goals that you are constantly monitoring, reflecting upon and revising.

Each January I have to laugh at how busy the gym is for the first 2 weeks--filled with all the people that decided that this year they are going to get in shape or lose weight. Then after those 2 weeks, the traffic dies down, because it was just a New Year's Resolution hype. (Note-if you are trying to make this your New Year's Resolution, please don't be offended by my take on this. Use this New Year to reflect on why this hasn't worked for you in the past so that it will this year.)

If you google New Year's Resolutions, you will find a multitude of sites that list ways to stick to your new goals. Most of these lists include: make your goals realistic, write them down, tell people (to help hold you accountable), and reward yourself. When you go back to your google search, you will also find many sites that list the top 10 New Year's Resolutions and ideas of how to create your New Year's Resolutions. If you have to do that much work (of searching for ideas) to come up with your new goal, it is my guess that you will not be able to stick with it. You should know in your heart and in your daily life what your goal should be. You need to find ways to make the monitoring of it part of your daily life. I'm not going to tell you how, but I'll tell you how I do.

I use the app Simple Goals to keep track of my personal and professional goals. I keep my professional goals on my iPad (since this is school issued and I use it at school constantly) and my personal goals on my iPod. I'm sure that there are a variety of other great tools out there to use to track your goals, however, I love this one because it is ridiculously simple (hence the title) and it's free! In addition, I have always kept a journal where I add my reflections and notes on my goals, however, I have really done more of that here on my blog and begun using evernote to journal, because I have become almost completely unable to use pen/paper.

I have also tried to model reflecting upon goals for my staff...at the start of the year I shared my personal/professional goals with staff and gave each teacher a journal (actually I bought a variety and they each picked the one they wanted) and gave them time to write their goals for the year-both professional and personal. I have asked teachers to bring these journals to each professional learning meeting and given them a few minutes at the end of each meeting to reflect and write. At the suggestion of one of my teachers, I have also tried to add a reflection prompt to the end of each of my Friday Focus posts for them to reflect/write if they choose. I don't check teacher's journals, so I really don't know how they are being used. Just like anything, I'm assuming that those that those that utilize it get the most out of it. At our next professional learning meeting I am planning to have teachers turn back to their first goals page they wrote at the start of the year to reflect on their goals for this school year and revise as necessary.

Use the New Year Holiday as a time to enjoy time with your family and friends while reflecting on your current goals and ask yourself:
-As you look at your data or method to keep track of your progress, how well are you meeting your goals? If you have no data to look at, then you need to find a method to track your progress.
-Do any of your goals need to be revised? How so?
-What do you need to add to your goals? Remember, if you make this something totally new, you will likely not stick to it. However, if this is your time to finally decide to quit a bad habit or add a new one, make sure that you find a way for this goal to "stick" all year and not die out by January 18th.

Leading the Way with Staff Memos

2011-12-26T05:49:00.000-08:00

Just over a year ago I heard Todd Whitaker speak to many principals at the annual AWSA (Association of Wisconsin School Administrators) convention. As always, I left with many great tips to continue leading my school, but the biggest tool I learned about was providing my staff with a weekly memo. Whitaker called it a "Friday Flash" or "Friday Focus" and is used to share best practices with staff, along with upcoming events and anything that can be shared in a memo and not waste staff meeting time (that could be better spent on learning/discussion).

I have since found a few other principal blogs used to share weekly memos with staff that I continue to follow for ideas, so I thought it was only fair that I share what I'm doing here for others.

I immediately began implementing this tool last year as a "Monday Memo" to staff. Whitaker says that this should be given to staff on brightly colored paper in their mailboxes, but I kept mine to email since I am also trying to lead staff using technology. This year I have expanded this practice to include:

*Monday Memo that includes "Great Things I Noticed Last Week," "Upcoming Events," "Nuts & Bolts Notes," and "Tech Tips"

*Friday Focus that shares my professional reflections with staff on something I am reading or learning with staff

*Created a blog that includes these posts, the staff google calendar, occassional staff polls, my shelfari widget (so staff can see what I'm reading), and other resources

Since refining this practice, I have really come to see the benefit of sharing "Great Things I Noticed" because I have observed the same practices be implemented in other classrooms after posting them. Some of the Friday Focus messages I have posted have encouraged discussions that I have overheard in the hallways or had staff mention their reflections to me. Since starting this I have also had a couple of staff ask about how to get started with blogging, how to get started on twitter (since I often share things I learn from people on twitter), and ask to borrow books I've read.

I have previously shared a cross-post of one of my Friday Focus posts HERE.

Here's an example of one of my Monday Memo posts from December:

Great Things I Noticed Last Week:
*While sitting in a 5K mini-lesson on setting a student excitedly said, "I just made a connection to another book we read!"
*In another 5K classroom students were practicing their Jolly Phonics with the SMARTBoard program and were able to read the following words: coast, grain, punch, and chimpanzee using their sounds. I bet the 1st grade teachers love to hear this!
*After 5th grade student presentations, the class was asked to give 3 positive comments and 3 things to improve on. I was amazed to hear the feedback given to students by students and surprised how much Daily 5/Cafe language carried over into the feedback for science presentations.
*5th grade started keeping track of "Writing Non-Negotiables" as writing skills are taught in mini-lessons. You can see the list from one class in the picture on the right. Mrs. B says that this list has really cut down on the time spent conferring with students for writing revising/editing--she does NOT help revise if they have a mistake that is on the non-negotiable list. Wouldn't it be great if we had a list of expectations like this at each grade level?

Events This Week:
*Monday - Mentors meeting at 3:05 in Media Center
*Tuesday - I will be gone all day at the SLATE conference (School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education) in Wisconsin Dells.
*Thursday - No Office Day--I'll be spending my day in 3-5th grade classrooms
K/2/4 Music Concert (including 5th grade band) at 6:30 PM
*Friday - Just a reminder to show your school spirit and wear your school shirt (please help remind your students too)

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Just a reminder that next week is already mid-quarter (I had to triple check the calendar to be sure!) so make sure you're ready to send home a progress report for each of your students.
* We've added another Tech Tuesday to the calendar for December 20th. I know that's a busy week, but there's quite a few teachers excited about using Pinterest or wanting to learn how before break so Jean and Bethany will be teaching us how that day.

Tech Tip:
*I've seen some great websites being used on the SMARTBoards and in the computer lab that I'm sure students would continue to use at home if they have internet access. You can show them how to access the site from the student resources on the district webpage (if it's there) or include the web address in your newsletter, which can be quite lengthy and difficult to type at times. If you want to learn how to make a shortened web address to share with students/parents for home and for easy access in the computer lab you just need to go to http://bitly.com and sign up for an account. Here's a screencast I made to show you how to use this tool. Let me know if you need any help getting started on this.

 Let

Inattentional Blindness

2011-12-12T15:37:00.001-08:00

When it comes to reading I usually choose professional education books over fiction to continue my learning as a principal and instructional leader. I have strayed from ed literature after hearing a podcast with Life Coach, Mel Robbins on the Manic Mommies podcast. Her sense of humor and powerful message led me to order her book Stop Saying You're Fine before I even finished listening to the podcast. Even though her book is not an professional education book, I have been making many connections to my position in education throughout reading it.

The biggest connection I've made to education is while reading her chapter on how admitting what you want focuses your attention. "Inattentional blindness" is a phenomenon that describes how we often miss what is right in front of us unless we are completely focused on it.

Here's the best example to point this out. Just watch this youtube clip for 1 minute to take the awareness test. You need to keep track of how many times the team in white passes the ball.

Did you see it? The only reason I did is because I read about the results of this in Robbins' book. In a study involving a similar clip, 46% of people missed it.

What's the point of this? Robbins states, "you miss an enormous number of opportunities to change your life on a daily basis because you are not focused on what you want. You are focused on your problems and maintaining the illusion that you are fine. Until you face the truth about your life and start focusing on opportunities to take action, you will continue to miss the gorilla moonwalking in the background."

WOW!

So often in education, our discussions can go down the trail of unending outside factors (home life, socio-economic status, the schedule/yearly calendar, previous year's teacher, etc.) When we spend our time listing outside factors affecting a student, we are wasting precious time to look at what we can change to better meet a student's needs. Here are just a few examples.

The young elementary student that is tardy everyday, because his/her single parent works late the night before and sleeps past the alarm. Keep the child in at recess (not a favorite choice), add an individual incentive for that student if he/she does make it on time, make arrangements to keep the student after school, change the schedule so the student isn't missing the instruction that they need the most (I understand that's difficult to do) or start giving them a wake up call each morning (I've actually done that and after about a week of this, they get really sick of it and start coming on time...or change their number).
The student that is 2 years below reading level and is already getting a "double-dose" of reading (full 90 minutes of literacy in the classroom and 30 minute reading intervention daily), but you know is never reading at home. Then add a "triple dose" of reading and set the child up with 15 minutes of the day reading to a volunteer. No volunteers? Contact a teacher of an older grade and have a student volunteer come down to listen to the student read. If you are the older grade, then have your student go to a younger grade. Or have your student record themselves reading into the free program audacity on your computer.
The student that just transferred to your school and you wonder what in the world the previous district had for curriculum, because this child is so far behind, yet came with a glowing report card in their cumulative file. Get started on interventions right away.

I challenge you to think about what opportunities you're missing out on in your classroom/school, because you're focused on the problems or obstacles. What are you not doing, but making excuses for why you're not doing it? What is it that you want for your students? What are you going to do to make it happen?

Photo cc license shared by CrazyFast

Web 2.0 and Higher Level Thinking

2011-12-10T11:46:00.000-08:00

Each week I post a "Friday Focus" for staff on my staff memo blog as a way to model professional reflection and hopefully inspire them each week. This week I attempted to summarize what I learned from Scott McLeod at SLATE. This is a cross-post from my staff blog.

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This week I attended the SLATE (School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education) conference where I was put on brain-overload from the many challenging thoughts and great ideas shared to continue advancing integration of technology in education.

I was excited to hear our keynote speaker, Scott Mcleod, because I have followed his blog and twitterfeed for a couple of years now. Scott created the following powerful video clip:

Just as I expected, Scott spent 2 hours sharing far too much information for me to share in this post, but I do want to share the "learning nuggets" that I took home with me:

*Web 2.0 -the internet is no longer just reading information, but interacting with it, connecting with others and easily sharing information (i.e. podcasts, facebook, twitter, blogs, youtube, wikipedia, linkdin, four square, pinterest, webkinz, wordle, the list goes on...)

*Consumers vs. Creators - With all the web 2.0 tools today, we are no longer consumers of the internet, we are creators. One well known example of this is the amount of sales from amazon.com that are attributed to the product reviews that people submit. If you are submitting a review, you are helping to create amazon. He also said that if you are reading reviews, but never leaving a review, then you're a "moocher" and you need to help contribute. (With this thought, I'm making it my personal goal to try to add comments to the blog posts that I read throughout the week)

*With all these web 2.0 tools...
-We all have a voice
-We can easily find each other
-We can easily work together

*We are now preparing our students for jobs that don't currently exist.

*Our students need to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers (not "regurgitators")

*If we are going to prepare our students for the new jobs (that we don't even know about now) that require creative work, then we need to plan learning that is in the top 3 of Bloom's Taxonomy (visual above of this)--Analyzing, Evaluating and Creating.

My reflection prompt for you:
What are you doing in your classroom to encourage critical thinking, problem solving and creating? How much of student time is spent consuming information versus creating it?

Sharing Success

2011-12-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

Recently, I finally convinced a dear friend of mine to join Twitter (after 2 years of talking about it to her), but was surprised when she said she has nothing worthy of tweeting for others. This is an awesome teacher that can share with me for hours about her classroom and has plenty to share with the Twitter PLN...she just doesn't realize it yet.

Today I had the pleasure of presenting at the SLATE conference with my colleauges Curt Rees and Jay Posick once again on Twitter (just to clarify, I do not actually work with Curt and Jay-we have connected via Twitter). This time we added the following video:

This video clip has really got me thinking about my online presence (Twitter, this blog, Connected Principals Blog, and podcasting). Over the past 3 years I have grown tremendously in my profession by connecting with others on Twitter and reflecting on my practice through this blog. I have had many compliments by others on twitter about my work and even had someone tell me today they wanted my autograph! (Highlight of my day). I have also had others contact me to skype with them about topics I often tweet about (Daily 5, ipad for Walkthroughs, etc). What's funny to me, is that I originally sought out others on twitter for these topics and realize that the more I talk about it, the more I reflect/grow in each of those areas. Compliments and opportunities like this always make me feel good, however, I am always growing and know that there are many better administrators out there to learn from. There are many teachers, tech directors, instructional coaches, and other educators doing great things, they just aren’t all on twitter sharing it with the world. I just happen to be one administrator sharing what I am doing and sharing what my awesome teachers are doing for kids.

So, to those of you who enjoy following my blog/twitter account--thank you! To those of you who think I’m a twitter celebrity--I’m just a Twitter Evangelist, trying to get the rest of the Education World on twitter for my selfish reasons--to keep learning and growing. You all matter and you all have a lot to share.

2011 Edublog Nominations

2011-11-27T06:23:00.000-08:00

Almost everyone on twitter is talking about the Edublog Awards right now and I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that with almost 3 years of being on twitter I've never paid attention to the Edublog Awards. I can recall seeing tweets about it and have seen Edublog Award badges on some blogs, but never stopped to find out what it was about. This weekend, someone from twitter nominated my blog in her Edublog Nominations post here. It was a nice little pat on the back for me, which my husband promptly told me not to let go to my head since "anyone can nominate anyone." I do have to side with my husband (rare occasion that shouldn't go to his head) that the award itself is a bit silly, but what I do find of value in the Edublog Awards is the opportunity it provides for educators to share the favorite blogs that they are learning from. In just 5 minutes of exploring the Edublog Awards page I found several great new blogs that I wasn't previously following and immediately added to my google reader.

So, now that I'm aware of The Edublog Awards this time around, I am posting my nominations in hopes that someone else finds a great blog that they haven't previously been following:

Best Group Blog: Connected Principals has been a great resource to me to follow posts from a variety of administrators. I have contributed to this group blog a couple of times, but benefit even more from what other administrators have to share in their posts.

Best New Blog: I've enjoyed reading It's All About Learning by @henriksent, a Canadian teacher/administrator that just recently began tweeting and blogging.

Best School Administrator's Blog: The Principal's Posts by @l_hilt is a blog I enjoy reading and learning from with each post she shares. She is a principal that challenges the status quo and is transparent about her learning.

Best Free Admin Resource: Eduleadership by @eduleadership started out as a blog, but now also contains podcasts, webinars, and iPad for administrator resources. Everything I've learned about organization/time management to become more effective as a principal, I've learned from Justin Baeder at Eduleadership.

Best Individual Blog: Since my school has gone school-wide with Daily 5/CAFE literacy framework, I have been following and learning from the Delightful Daily 5 Cafe Blog by @komos72, a 1st grade teacher implementing Daily 5/Cafe in her classroom and blogging about her experience and sharing her reflections to benefit other teachers. I have also enjoyed learning from her on twitter during the #d5chat (weekly daily 5 chats).

Best twitter hashtag: I have grown so much from what I have learned from others in the weekly #educoach chat, a chat for instructional coaches/leaders. I strongly believe that the principal role should be more of a coach than a manager/supervisor and have been improving in my role from the weeklky #educoach chat.

Best Free Web Resource: TeacherCast provides a variety of educational podcasts, screencasts, app reviews, etc.

Why our school recognizes honor roll in school pride assemblies

2011-11-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

Over the past 6 months I have read numerous tweets and blog posts from other principals and teachers regarding doing away with Honor Roll and school assemblies recognizing students for Honor Roll. I appreciated how this discussion challenged my thinking, but I never joined in the discussion, because I am the one that started the Honor Roll assembly at our school and decided it is time for me to explain why our school started this.

During my first year as principal in my current school I quickly learned that there was a common culture amongst students in our district that learning is "not cool". We are a unique school made up of students from surrounding small, rural communities and even though we have separate elementary, middle and high schools we are all in one large building. I heard many stories from teachers in upper grades describing examples in class in which students were embarrassed about the high grades they received. I heard about a school assembly recognizing older students for their achievements that didn't go well, because many students were laughing and teasing each other. The saddest story to me was of a senior receiving a National Merit Scholarship but she didn't want to be recognized publicly for it out of fear of peers finding out. When I heard this, I knew that we had to do something at the elementary level to change this culture in our building.

Our 4th/5th grade teachers had already begun the tradition years ago of recognizing students that made Honor Roll status of either having all A's, A's/B's or all B's on their report cards. Students names were written on Trojan Head cut-outs (our school mascot is the trojan) and displayed on the hallway. There were a few years that parents donated money for these students to receive special t-shirts at the end of the year.

At the beginning of my 2nd year as principal, I met with a committee of teachers to build on this current practice started by our 4/5th grade teachers. We decided to have quarterly Pride assemblies to recognize our students for their academic achievements and invite parents to these assemblies as well. We added 3rd graders to the list of students to be recognized for Honor Roll since they also received letter grades on their report cards. In addition, we allowed every teacher in the school (including special area teachers) to nominate one student to be recognized for being "On a Roll." This could be a student in any grade working hard to improve in any area.

This is now our 3rd year of having a quarterly pride assembly. Yesterday was our 1st Pride assembly for the year and here's how it went:
*I thanked parents for coming to show their support for their children. I then talked about how hard all of our students are working in every grade to become great readers/writers during Daily 5 time and had student participation to tell what Stamina is, why they need to read so much and how it helps them become great learners.
*I reviewed Pride Assembly behavior:
Used student volunteers to demonstrate the "wrong" way to receive an award (they exaggerated bragging to others, saying "haha you didn't get one", etc) and then students to demonstrate the "right" way to receive an award.
Also talked about what students should do if they don't receive an award (give a thumbs up or congratulate their peers; not pout)
*Presented certificates/pencils to the students for "On a Roll" reading the reason for each recognition (ex: "Johnny is On a Roll for working hard at building his stamina during Daily 5 and increasing his reading level." and "Suzie has been practicing her math facts and keeps moving up in Rocket Math").
*Presented certificates/pencils to students for:
3rd grade A/B's
3rd grade A's
4th grade A/B's
4th grade A's
5th grade A/B's
5th grade A's
*I closed the assembly by thanking our students for their outstanding behavior during the assembly and read to them 2 quotes from our guest teachers about why they love to be called to be guest teachers in our school, because our students are always so well behaved.

Each time we have this assembly I am amazed by our students' behavior of congratulating each other and being proud of their accomplishments. Our parent feedback has always been thankful for recognizing their children and that they are invited to attend these assemblies.

Despite this, I know that this practice may change in the future. Through implementing Daily5/Cafe and focusing on conferring with each student on their current level and their goals to focus on, we are building intrinsic motivation in all of our students. Even in the upper grades we are seeing students continue to love learning and enjoy sharing with each other what they have recently read or learned about during reflection time. We are beginning discussions on changing our grading process and I've even heard of some schools eliminating grades. I have no idea where this will take us, but for now, we continue to recognize students for honor roll.

Meeting an "Educational Celebrity"

2011-11-05T22:17:00.001-07:00

One of the benefits of being on twitter is that you can tap into the minds of great educators and educational leaders. Even more so, you can connect with the gurus or "educational celebrities." One of the "greats" that I've been fortunate to connect with on Twitter is Todd Whitaker. I'd even like to say I helped get him on twitter, because about a year ago, someone tweeted that they were attending his conference (I can't remember who this was) and I replied that they need to tell him to get on twitter. OK, that's probably a stretch, but he's on twitter now, so that's what matters!

Anyhow, after years of reading Whitaker's books I have now been following him on twitter for almost a year. What is great about Todd is that he actually spends time connecting with educators on twitter and responds to our questions. He has been like a personal coach for me over the past few months, answering several questions through twitter, email and a phone call.

Last week while attending the AWSA Convention I got to hear Todd speak about Motivating Teachers during Difficult Times. I was more than excited that Todd recognized me when he saw me and chatted with me before/during/after his session. After his session, he gave me his speaker's badge (teachers in my building-you will find it proudly tacked up on the bulletin board in my office!) While Todd waited for his cab to pick him up Curt Rees (one of my co-presenters from the AWSA convention) and I talked with him further on educational issues for about 20 minutes.

My point for this blog post? Just that I'm bragging that I met Todd in person and got my picture taken with him! (That's ok for one post right?)

Pictured above: Myself, Todd Whitaker and Curt Rees

Expanding my PLN on Twitter

2011-10-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

My twitter journey began in February 2009 during my first year as a principal. Like most, I was reluctant to sign up after hearing about it, but finally signed up after my 2 favorite principals on the Practical Principals podcast mentioned it in a couple of their podcasts. In the beginning I only followed about 10 other principals and built some strong connections with those that I followed. I couldn't believe how much I could learn from others online in just 140 characters. I can recall one night when I spent hours searching who each of them were following so that I could follow as many principals as I could find.

For probably a year (possibly longer) I only followed principals on twitter and had my account set to secure/private. This changed after I realized how many other great people I found to follow because someone else retweeted one of their tweets. I can recall trying to retweet a great tweet with a link, but couldn't because they were set to private and realized that I was preventing myself from gaining other great followers to connect with if I was set to private. I also started finding great blog posts and other resources to share with my staff so I began expanding my PLN (Professional/Personal Learning Network) even further by following as many great teachers as I could.

I talk about the great things I learn from twitter as much as possible. I cannot tell you how many times I have shared something with a teacher/colleague and was asked, "where did you learn that?" My reply always is, "I learned it from someone on twitter."

Within the past year I have made it my personal mission to spread the word about twitter to as many as I can, because it means I can expand my PLN and learn from even more great educators/administrators. I have written about it for a colleague's grad class which I also posted here. I taught teachers about it last summer at the Regional Summer Teacher Academy (cofounded by @MrAaronOlson and myself), which I also recorded screencasts of here. This week I had the pleasure of sharing twitter with my administrative colleagues at the AWSA (Association of Wisconsin School Administrators) Convention along with @WiscPrincipal and @PosickJ, 2 amazing admin colleagues that I met on twitter. Here is the presentation we shared (it wasn't just "sit and get," we gave a lot of time for hands-on experience and help getting started using twitter):

Twitter Island

View more presentations from Curt Rees

I was excited by how many of our session attendees started using twitter that evening and even more excited to see this tweet today:

Even though many think I'm crazy when I say, "I learned that from twitter" I'm not going to stop, because once they get started they are also reaping the benefits of my PLN!

This December we will be sharing again at the SLATE Convention (School Leaders Advancing Technology in Education). So, if you're in Wisconsin reading this and know others that don't know the power of Twitter yet, please tell them about it and encourage them to go to SLATE if they have the opportunity as well.

Believe That Every Child Can Learn

2011-10-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Each week I post a "Friday Focus" for staff on my staff memo blog as a way to model professional reflection and hopefully inspire them each week. This week, I got a bit more personal than I ever have in the past, but I've learned from Regie Routman to "write what is in your heart." Here is a cross-post from my staff blog from this week:
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"Believe that every child can learn, regardless of ethnicity, learning disabilities, emotional or behavior problems, or the economic situation of the family." ~Ron Clark

I'm almost finished reading Ron Clark's new book, The End of Molasses Classes: 101 Extraordinary Solutions for Parents and Teachers. I'm sure that many of you have heard of Ron Clark, because he's the author of the Essential 55 and was featured on Oprah several years ago. Or maybe you saw the movie "The Ron Clark Story" in which Matthew Perry played him as a teacher in an inner-city Harlem school. He is well known for working with disadvantaged students to get them engaged in school and become as successful as their (nondisadvantaged) peers.

#38 in this book is: "Believe that every child can learn, regardless of ethnicity, learning disabilities, emotional or behavior problems, or the economic situation of the family."

Clark describes his experience of teaching "George" how to read in the 5th grade (after getting over the disbelief that he couldn't read at this grade level). He came up with alternative methods and was patient and persistant with George until he made great progress and became a "decent" student. Several years later after George graduated and served in the Navy he came back and told Mr. Clark's students, "Work really hard to be the individual that Mr. Clark sees in you. Even if you don't see it in yourself, sometimes adults just know us a little better than we do."

I can personally relate to this section of his book due to my experiences growing up. I grew up in a very dysfuntional home that is similiar to some of our most challenging students that, at times, don't seem to have much of a future. When I share details of my past, people are often surprised and ask how I got to where I am now. I have often pondered that same question, because my sibblings were not as lucky as I. But as I reflect, I also know that my sibblings did not ever seem to have any positive school experiences....but I did. Despite moving around (because we were constantly being evicted) and attending 13 different schools, I was fortunate enough to have some great teachers along the way that saw my potential. I will never forget:
*One of my 3rd grade teachers (I don't even recall her name because I went to 5 schools that year) that came to my house after I had been absent for several days to bring my schoolwork to me--thinking back, she knew my home situation and was probably just making sure I was safe.
*Mrs. McDevitt, my 5th grade teacher, who never punished me for not having my homework done (because I was babysitting my 3 younger sibblings), but let me come into her classroom early to get it done. I never needed help, just a quiet place to do it without one of the little ones coloring on it.
*Mr. Johnson, my 7th grade math teacher who pushed me to move into 8th Grade Algebra early when I never thought I was capable of it. (I will also never forget when my name was drawn in assembly for a reading contest and I got to shave half of his beard off!)
*Mrs. Staudt, my High School English Teacher who gave me extra time to complete my assignments when she knew that I was up late, because I had worked until midnight at McDonald's for three nights in a row.

I have debated whether or not to share this with you, because of how personal it is, but still felt compelled to do so. If it were not for great teachers like you, I would not be where I am today. If we as adults don't see the potential in every child and truly believe that every child can learn, then how can we expect them to have hope and see the potential in themselves? We have to look at them and see what we want them to become.

Photo Credit: CC License shared by David Thiel

Reflecting on my classroom visits

2011-10-08T10:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I tweeted that I had completed 126 classroom visits during the month of September and quickly had several replies from other administrators (in public mentions and direct messages):

How long do you stay in a classroom?
What form/method are you using?
Do you always give teachers feedback?
How do you make time for that many walkthroughs?

Since my professional development plan is on the practice of conducting classroom walkthroughs/providing teachers with feedback to improve student learning and I had this many questions coming my way I thought it would be the perfect topic for a blog post.

I know that many districts have an adopted/required method of walkthroughs that dictates what they are looking for, how long to stay in the room, and how they provide teacher feedback. I have read about several different methods, used a required method in my previous district, been to an all day training on one method and participated in a webinar to learn about Marzano's iObservation. Despite all of that, our district does not have an adopted requirement and I do not do always do the same thing.

I use the app Simple Goals to keep a running tally of how many classrooms I have visited (which is the total number I tweeted for September). This running tally includes when I visit a classroom for a walkthrough (which could be anywhere from 1 - 15 minutes), a full length observation, to observe a student or for me to teach a class. I do not count if I was just dropping something off for a teacher or getting a student to come to the office.

Since our school is now running with wifi, I recently created a walkthrough tool for myself using google forms. I made it very handy on my iPad by adding it right to the homescreen on my iPad so I don't have to waste any time finding it. I love being able to view the results in summary form so I can see the graphs and see how many times I've been in each classroom. I use this google form to gather data, NOT as a set of criteria I'm looking for or to give it back to teachers. Why? The best teachers are their own worst critics and if you give them a checklist that doesn't have everything checked off, they are going to be disappointed that you didn't see x, y, or z which happened 5 minutes after you left the classroom. I have also found that my best teachers are so reflective that they will come to me after I've been in their class and apologize about what I saw (even though I saw something great!) or tell me what they'd already reflected on from what I saw and how they're going to improve it. They do not need a checklist!!

While I want to give teachers feedback every time, it just doesn't happen. Ideally, I'd love to give verbal feedback, but that's even more unrealistic (although I do try when I can). Last summer I attended a conference with Regie Routman and she suggested to give verbal feedback to the teacher and students while you're in the room. I struggle with this, because I do not want to interrupt, however, I have started trying this and do enjoy it...but I only do this when there's a point in the instruction that I can do so and know that the teacher would be ok with it. At best, I provide an email that just states:

"When I visited your classroom, I noticed students were....(tell what I saw/heard them doing, try to state what was effective or something in regards to student engagement or mastery of the objective)....I wonder...."

Or something to that effect. It's different every time based on what I saw. If there is something I had a concern about, I go to the teacher, because emails can be taken the wrong way. My goal in providing feedback to teachers is always for them to reflect on student learning--whether it's as to what was effective for student learning or what was not effective for student learning.

The google form that I use provides me with data so I can keep track of whose room I've been in/how many times, what class period, what instructional groupings I saw, what level of student engagement I saw, and how I provided feedback (email, verbal or none).

For the first few weeks of using this method, here are some of the trends I saw and my reflection for each:

Since our school is implementing Daily 5 in every classroom, I have made my focus on getting into classrooms during their literacy block so I can see how it is going and offer feedback/encouragement/support as needed. I have also enjoyed sharing with all staff different things I'm seeing in each classroom to help them all learn from each other.

The instructional groupings I saw were almost split between whole group instruction and individual/independent work. This is because during the literacy blocks teachers were either giving mini-lessons or it was a daily5 session in which students were independently reading or writing.

I really wish I would have data from previous years on student engagement, because I truly believe from my observations over the years that students are more interested and engaged with the Daily 5 framework for reading/writing. They have a sense of urgency and know what they need to do to become great readers and writers. Most importantly, students have choice in what they are reading/writing and they love it...even our most reluctant/struggling readers/writers!

I am disappointed to see my results for feedback given to staff. We have had issues with our wifi, so I did not have the email function working on my iPad, which made it difficult to email feedback to teachers in a timely fashion. However, this should not be an excuse. If my goal is to provide teachers with feedback to encourage reflection on student learning, then I need to make better efforts to provide them with feedback.

The final question from a colleague on twitter: How do you make time for that many walkthoughs? The short answer is simply that I make time. The long answer would be another long post about how I've learned to manage my time, be more efficient with managing my emails/phone calls/paperwork/etc and about how my days are for people and nights are for paperwork (after my kids are in bed). I think getting into classrooms is the most important job of the principal. By being in teacher's classrooms I am able to share teachers' great ideas/strengths with the rest of the staff to benefit all students, not just the students in a great teachers' classroom. In addition, it helps me to know all of the students. If I receive a parent phone call with a concern, I usually have background information before the parent even calls from being in classrooms (on a side note, the amount of concerned parent phone calls over the past few years have dropped significantly).

That said, I already know the next 2 months will not be as great as September was due to the amount of my time that will be consumed by state testing as the District Assessment Coordinator (it's much more than just the week of testing on teachers/students).

I welcome any feedback from other administrators/teachers on this topic and would love to hear your ideas.

Building Professional Trust

2011-09-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

One of my professional goals this year is to encourage teachers to reflect, by providing them with the tools and time to do so. In addition, my goal is to model reflection for them. Each week I am sending out a "Friday Focus" which will share my reflections with staff on what I have recently encountered or learned about. Here is my most recent Friday Focus.

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"What you teach today in your first grade classroom matters to those students when they are in fourth grade. and well beyond." ~Unknown

"When I attended Regie Routman’s Literacy and Leadership Institute this past summer, one of the leaders of a breakout session (a principal from Colorado) shared this quote with us. In addition, she talked about how her staff, over time, developed professional trust with one another. I almost snickered when someone asked, "What do you mean by professional trust?" But I was amazed by her profound response...

"If we have professional trust amongst us, then a 2nd grade teacher can trust that the student coming to her has been taught appropriately and can trust that when she moves that student on, that in the following grade levels, that student will be receiving the same great instruction and focus on learning as she had dedicated to that student. As a teacher, you trust that the growth that you have seen in your students will continue year after year, no matter which teacher they are placed with. Unfortunately, it only takes one teacher's practice to compromise the work of the entire school."

Wow! Until I heard her say this, my understanding of the term "professional trust" was very superficial. As a teacher, I was always naturally collaborative and thrived on learning from my colleagues that shared their great ideas, successes and their failures (so I wouldn't make the same mistakes!) When I heard complaints from some of my colleagues that didn't want to spend their prep time planning with others (because they just wanted to focus on "their" kids) I never agreed with that point of view, but I could understand how it can seem time consuming or "messy" trying to get a group of people to all agree on what they are going to do.

This explanation of professional trust has completely solidified for me why it is so important that we collaborate. Not just that we're meeting each week, but that we are developing common expectations within our grade levels and across all of our grade levels. So that whatever grade you teach, you know what all of your incoming students were taught last year and you know where you need to get your students by the end of this year. And if you have a student or multiple students not meeting that expectation, you know that you have your PLC to rely on---to learn what your colleague did in his classroom that was more effective for a particular skill or that when you send your students out for WIN time, that teachers’ heart is in it for “your” kids just as much as yours is.

Over the past two days our 3/5th grade teachers (as well as MS/HS English teachers) spent an entire day scoring students’ 6 Traits Essays collaboratively. Before beginning this process, each group scored the same student papers together and discussed why they chose that score for each writing trait to come to inter-rater reliability, or a common agreement on scoring. While this process took time and work, it is found by Douglas Reeves to be an effective practice for teachers to develop common expectations that impact student learning. By having these discussions at the beginning of the year, teachers develop a collective understanding of what a student must do to earn a score of a 3 or a 5 when they are writing.

As we discuss our beliefs on reading and writing and come to agreement on our beliefs collectively, we will be laying the foundation for our common expectations and practices as well as building our professional trust amongst one another.

"Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him,and let him know that you trust him.” ~Booker T. Washington

No Office Day

2011-09-17T19:31:00.001-07:00

Last year I joined several other principal colleagues from twitter to have a No Office Day. I spent an entire day in classrooms and made it my focus to get in every classroom in the building that day. This year, Principal @Shiraleibowitz started a wiki for International No Office Day. This year I excitedly signed up, but decided to focus on just a few grade levels with the intent of having another No Office Day for the rest of the grade levels. In hindsight, I would like to have a No Office Day for each grade level.

In my Monday Memo I sent staff the following message:

*No Office Day (in 4K-2nd grades) - I plan to set aside days in my calendar throughout the year to spend immersed in classes/grade levels throughout the day. I am really excited about this! I will be in the classrooms from students’ arrival through the end of the day; planning to spend time in the rooms during academic times and to visit specials with your classes. I am happy to sit and observe, but reeeeally what I would love to do is join in the fun. Please put me to work! Need someone to facilitate a small group? Want to team up to teach a topic? Would you like to have someone work 1:1 with a student? Want me to help prepare something on the SMARTBoard? These are all ways I’d be happy to help. Please send me an email to let me know--my calendar is WIDE open!! If there is work/planning I need to complete before that day, kindly let me know a day or two in advance.

I must admit I took the wording from the blog posts I had seen from Principals @L_Hilt and @Fliegs and adapted (why create the wheel?). I keep a calendar outside my office door and usually post a sign that reads "I'm out in classrooms to see what students are learning" each day during my No Office hours, but on the day of my No Office Day, I put the following note on my door:
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I’ve joined in with many other school principals from Twitter to have a No Office Day this week (hopefully my first of many)!
I am going to be in 4K-2^nd grade classrooms today. :)

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I don't know if anyone noticed the sign, but I try to promote learning and growing professionally through twitter any chance I get.

So, how was my day? Fantastically fun! I left school feeling energized from the awesome teachers, students and learning at my school.

Here's how I spent my day:
Started out my day greeting students in the parking lot, although that is what I do every morning. I then skipped being on the morning announcements, because I wanted to join in classes right away (we also have students join the announcements, so I let them have it all!)

I joined 1st graders in art class as they were learning how to add to their previous project (of patterns colored with crayons) by painting a pattern on top. Our fantastic art teacher told students that paint and crayons don't like each other so the crayon pattern would still be seen once painted over. One of the 1st graders made the connection that crayons and paint are like cats and dogs! Love it!

I joined a 2nd grade class that was reviewing how to identify easy, just right, and hard books and were then given time to put post-it notes on each of the books in their book bin so they can become aware of their book choices and have more just right books than easy/hard. I'm so glad I popped into this class, because it helped me out in my next scheduled place to be....

I assisted in a 1st grade classroom during Daily 5 time by conferencing with individual students on their book choices. Each student I met with showed me all the books in their book bin and told me about why they chose that book and read passages from a few books to me. I particularly enjoyed listening to a very creative 1st grader that had more hard books than just right books, but has a gift for "reading" the pictures of his books and makes up very creative and entertaining stories.

I joined a 5 year-old kindergarten class in music and tried to keep up with their songs/actions. I also noticed in here that my own child acts goofy if I am in the room (but that could be an entirely separate post!)

I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out in another 2nd grade classroom that was working on building their reading stamina during Daily 5 time. I actually read from a kindle book on my iPad.

I read books from one of my favorite authors, Mo Willems, to a couple of 5 year-old kindergarten classrooms.

I joined a 1st grade class during a science lesson on parts of a plant. I helped by pulling student names for them to go up to the SMARTBoard for the interactive pieces of the lesson (was impressed that the teacher used activities that allowed for almost everyone to go to the SMARTBoard twice).

I visited the remainder of the 4K-2nd grade classes that I didn't describe above.

I look forward to scheduling additional No Office Days (in addition to my No Office Hours that I already have each day) and hope to participate more instead of just observing.

Teaching with Daily 5/Cafe for Summer School -- My Reflections

2011-08-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

This is a cross-post from my staff blog...the first of my blog posts to model reflection for my teachers (and "putting myself out there" for them).

Since I am asking all teachers to teach using the Daily 5 Framework for Literacy this year, I felt that it was important for me to dip my hands in this as well. How can I ask my teachers to do something that I haven't ever done? During our 2nd session of summer school I taught 6th Grade English Language Arts (students going into 6th grade) and used the Daily 2 (Read to Self and Work on Writing) as my framework and taught Cafe Strategies. One disclaimer I must mention is that this was only 3 weeks (12 days) for this session and I only had 7-9 students each day.

Since our 5th graders were used to the Daily 3 (Read to Self, Work on Writing and Word Work) I decided to continue with Read to Self and Work on Writing, but did not add Word Work due to only having them for 3 weeks.

Here are my reflections from my experience:

I began my planning for this class by using the Daily 5 and Cafe For Dummies guide that I found on the ProTeacher message board (I'm sorry to not give credit that's due, but I do not know who created this). From looking at the Daily 5 and Cafe books, this packet combines the lessons for the first 25 days from both of the books so you don't have to be flipping through both books. I found this packet extremely helpful. I did still find myself turning to the Daily 5 and Cafe books--they really become your "bible" as you are teaching. The Daily 5 book gives a great list of picture books for mini-lessons, however, I wish I could have found a list that was more specific, identifying picture books for each cafe strategy and specific to grade levels. After wishing that I could find this I decided to start a document in our school shared file (in the Cafe folder) so that as teachers develop their lesson they can add to this. Teachers- I encourage you to add to this document throughout the year so we can work smarter together!

After the first day with my students I realized how important it is to have MANY MANY books in your classroom library and a wide variety to meet their interests. If a student cannot find a book that they are interested in then they are going to have a difficult time increasing their stamina (it reminds me of how many times I have fallen asleep while trying to watch a Western movie with my husband--I have no interest in them!) When I was a classroom teacher I spent most of my money and effort to make sure I had enough leveled books, but during this summer school class found myself going to the library and gathering as many books as I could that I felt would appeal to the wide variety of interests of this group of students, because the classroom library wasn't meeting their reading appetite. As a leader, this also tells me how we need to be spending our book money at school--on classroom libraries.

I had this group of students from 8:00-9:10 and found it was not even close to enough time. After a class meeting and a mini lesson, we often only had one round of Daily2 and then gathered together before it was time to go. I'm glad that we have made 90 minute literacy blocks a priority in our building, but also now realize why the 2nd grade teachers have told me they can not teach science and social studies as separate subjects--to have enough time for literacy, they must integrate those content areas into literacy. With limited time and a sense of urgency for what I wanted to accomplish during this 70 minute period, I realized that I could not be doing all the talking in my mini-lessons...the person who does the most work does the most learning. I found the Whole Class Lesson Elements on pages 95-96 of the CAFE book a good reminder for how to engage students in learning and for them to be doing the most work---not me.

In regards to time and time spent on writing, I also found that Daily 5 time cannot be your only time for writing. Regie Routman says, "kids who have a purpose care about their writing and the people who will read it." In the Daily 5 book, the sisters distinguish between Work on Writing and Writers' Workshop (they do have a separate Writer's Workshop time in addition to D5 time): "Typically children use Work on Writing time to continue the work they have been doing during writer's workshop. The main difference between the two is that during the workshop, we may ask students to produce a piece of writing based on a strategy or genre being taught, but during the Daily Five it is sustained writing of their choice."

I began using the Daily framework and taught a Cafe strategy from the first day and could not imagine teaching without the Cafe strategies. I know that many teachers begin by teaching only with Daily 5 and then read the Cafe book to add on after they feel comfortable with the Daily 5 framework, but Daily 5 just gives you the HOW--how your students are using their time during literacy. Cafe gives you the WHAT--the strategies you are teaching them to use during that literacy time. I can now see how a teacher might end up reverting back to old reading practices (pulling out the basal and workbooks) because Daily 5 is not enough.

I realized how important it is for students to set their purpose before they go to a round. I started out by having them tell me where they were going (Read to Self or Work on Writing) but then found one student spending quite a bit of time flipping through pages of his writers notebook, not accomplishing anything. Since he was not being independent and building his stamina I ended that round, came back and reviewed the I-Charts. Before having them go the next round I talked about how they also had to set their purpose. That student picked Work on Writing again, but this time I asked him what his purpose was, what was he going to work on? He told me he wanted to write about going camping. Guess what he did for the next round? He was completely focused and wrote the entire time--we actually ran out of time for him and he asked me if he could take his notebook home to finish that night (and he did)! The sisters say, "for each Daily Five choice the sense of urgency comes from understanding the why. The purpose for each task is clear, so the activity becomes worthy of concentrated effort and time. When we begin each lesson by telling our children why we are taking time to teach the idea or concept, we consistenly see more motivation and on-task behavior no matter what we are teaching."

After my first week and a half of trying to decide what CAFE strategies I was going to teach and how, I realized there is an entire section in the back of the CAFE book to help you out (DUH!!) starting on page 153. Put a big, bright tab there, because you will be using that section!

This is just "cosmetic" but I think the CAFE board we created would have looked better if I made the colored paper long enough to cover the length of the board (like the Sisters show). I don't really like how mine looked. I think it also looks more uniform when sentence strip paper is used instead of what I did (just cutting up construction paper that didn't end up being strips of the same size).

1:1 Conferring and "The Pensieve": I set up a pensieve for conferring with students and used the forms that the Sisters recommend in their book. I used the calendar to write down when I planned to confer with students (although I found this did not always get followed). I used the Keeping Track Form to document the dates for when I conferred with students for reading and writing. I found this more helpful for me, because it was a quick visual to see that which students I hadn't met with much at all (I tried to confer with the below readers every day for reading and only a few times for the higher readers during this 12 period session). I also used the Reading Conference with Icons form, but didn't find this to be very helpful when looking back to try to look for patterns/trends in a student's reading habits. After this session of summer school, Stacey Johnson shared with me a form she created that I liked much better, because it gives more of a checklist of what to listen for (so see her if you want to borrow or adapt it for your grade). I also found it helpful to keep a reflection page for myself in the Pensieve--I could turn to this and quickly jot a reflection note for myself in just 30 seconds (I am using my list of quick reflections to write this post).

I wish I could go back in time and teach with the Daily 5/Cafe. I cannot tell you how enjoyable and relaxing it was. I think back to teaching with guided reading/literacy centers and all the time/effort I spent to creating those centers, trying to decide what/how to grade centers work and really how much more work I did than the students. With Daily 5/Cafe, the students are doing the work, applying the strategies, and improving as readers. When given a choice, students have the motivation and develop a love for reading and writing.

As I said in the beginning of this post, I think it is essential that as the leader, I experience teaching with Daily 5/Cafe and that I continue to learn along with you through this journey at Dodgeland. I would love to spend more time in the classrooms teaching alongside teachers, not just coming in to observe. If anyone is open to this, I would love to come into a classroom for a week at a time to co-teach during the literacy block. Let me know if you're interested!

Twitter for Teachers

2011-08-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

At the Regional Summer Teacher Academy a few teachers said they were torn between attending my session and another one, so I told them to go ahead and go to the other one and I would make a screencast and help them after school someday if they are still interested/need help.
Here are the screencasts of my session. By the way, this was my first time ever making screencasts. I think this is going to become a great tool for me to share resources with my teachers. I used screenomatic to create these--if I can figure it out, then almost anyone can!

Twitter for Teachers Part 1

Twitter for Teachers Part 2

Twitter for Teachers Part 3

Differentiating Learning for Teachers

2011-08-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I "attended" Principal Lyn Hilt's session: "Differentiating Learning: It's Not Just for Students!" at the Reform Symposium Worldwide E-Conference. (By the way, all session recordings from RSCON3 are here. If you need help figuring out how to navigate this, let me know and I'd be glad to help.)

A common comment/complaint I've heard from other administrators is that their teachers have become complacent, lost their spark or are stuck in their old (teaching) habits. After attending Lyn's session, I started to wonder: Why have they become complacent? Why are they not continuing their own professional learning? Have we given teachers an environment in which they have had an opportunity to continue to grow as professionals? Have we given them the autonomy to expand their knowledge/skills and take risk in the classroom?

We are all too familiar with professional development being something that is done to you. It may have been an outside speaker that came in for what I call a "drive by" in-service or top-down professional development that teachers had no input on. Maybe you attended a conference and then didn't take the time to reflect and implement what you learned.

What I am learning about professional development is:
1. It must include differentiation for staff
2. It must include deep reflection

When an educator is learning something new this is the concrete experience part of the experiential cycle. This could be while reading about a new strategy, observing another classroom, or learning at a conference. Next they need to try to implement this in their classroom with students. Then, the teacher needs to have an opportunity for reflection. I'm sure we've all been in a conference/training in which we were asked to jot down a thought on an exit slip or a post-it note at the end as a method of reflection (I've asked my teachers to do this). While this is better than nothing, it is not enough. Reflection needs to be deep and involve analysis. You need to dig deep: this could be blogging, discussing with others. Reflection needs to be systemic and is an expected part of the process in order to be powerful. Then you will be ready to make conclusions and generate conclusions on the effectiveness of your strategy and its impact on student learning.

Just this past week my teachers (and teachers from 5 area districts) had the opportunity to attend the Regional Summer Teacher Academy and choose different sessions that they were interested in. This was a first ever opportunity for our teachers that I organized with another principal, Aaron Olson. This took many, many hours for us to plan and pull off, but it was worth it for our teachers. You can find out more about it here.

While our time is limited, I hope to continue providing teachers with more choice in their professional learning this year. I am going to start Tech Tuesdays so that once a month teachers can share (if they want to) any resources/tools/tricks &tips that they have with others. Our monthly staff meetings will be professional development meetings (I sure hope they will all pay attention to my emails that contain the "nuts and bolts" news, because I don't want to waste time on that in the meetings). As we implement Daily 5/Cafe school-wide I realize that teachers are all in different phases of implementation. Some of them have taught with Daily 5/Cafe for a year or more and some will just be getting started. I want to organize our time so that they will all benefit and continue to learn from each other.

In addition, I want to try to model learning and professional growth for my teachers by being transparent about my learning. I have previously kept this blog, my personal/professional blog, a secret and maintained a separate blog for my staff that just contained my weekly memos. This year I plan to share this blog with them and cross-post some of my reflections with them. In addition, I am going to ask for teachers that will allow me to join them in the classroom and co-teach with them so I can continue to practice the best strategies that I want my teachers to use. Finally, as we add an instructional coach to our staff this year, I want to find ways that we can model for the staff how to give feedback and learn from each other (I don't know how this will look yet).

photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdhout/4427251342/

When life gives you a windy day go fly a kite.

2011-08-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

Today my 5 year-old was disappointed that it wasn't "pool weather" outside. It rained a couple times, the sky was cloudy and it was windy. Instead of letting him sit in the house and watch Backyardigans over and over (which just means headache for me) I got his Buzz Light-Year kite and took both the boys outside to take advantage of the wind. If you know anything about kite flying (which I do not) then you'll know that you cannot just stand there and expect the kite to rise in the air. We had to work together--me holding the string/handle and Nathan holding the kite 30 feet from me trying to toss it up in the air. After a few tries, the wind caught it and up went our kite. We tried to watch Buzz fly up in the sky, but really spent most of our time running around the yard--me pulling on the handle to try to keep him from nose-diving into the yard and both my boys running, trying to catch the ribbon tails spiraling behind the kite.

We were in our backyard, so of course the kite landed in a tree at one point. Did we freak out? Well, Nathan did at first, but I just calmly said it was no big deal, grabbed the ladder, retrieved the kite and got it back up again. When Nathan took over the handle and got used to battling the pull of it, he decided to unravel the string and let the kite go as high as he could. I knew the risks we were running, but I wanted him to have fun and see what would happen. In between wind gusts, our kite landed at the top of a pine tree (way up there!) and got completely tangled. My ladder was useless. So, I went and got the bigger ladder (you know--that really neat ladder that folds all different ways-I'm sure you've seen it on a late night infomercial). I extended the ladder as high as it would go and climbed up 20 feet. While holding on to a tree limb so I wouldn't fall, waved a rake above me to get the kite down.

During our whole kite flying escapade I made several connection between our roles and actions we can take in education. First of all, there are so many things that we cannot control--federal/state/district demands, students' socio-economic status, parent support, budgets, technology glitches, etc. What we can control is what we do with our students during the school day and how we react to situations. Time and time again, I have heard the complaints about "parents these days," "kids these days," "the schedule doesn't allow that" and "insert your complaint here, because I'm sure it's the same at any school." You can complain about a student lacking parent support (which will not help) or you can choose to do your best during the time you have him--build a relationship, help him make goals, teach, give him feedback, and help him achieve his goals. You can throw your hands in the air and say you don't know how to help a student or you can reach out to your Professional Learning Network to find something else to try.

Back to the kite flying: I knew that when I let Nathan unravel all the string for his kite that it would probably mean trouble, but I also knew that he wanted to take that risk and he needed to learn from that experience himself. I know that this is not the best analogy for education, because I would never allow a teacher to do something that I knew would be bad for kids (so please don't read it that way). As administrators, we need to give our teachers autonomy and allow them to take risks so they can reflect and learn along with their students. Todd Whitaker says, "If you didn't learn anything, you probably didn't teach anything either." Two years ago when one of my teachers asked to try teaching with the Daily 5 framework in her classroom, it turned out to be one of the best paid off risks for our students.

My son could have sat in the house all day complaining about the weather wrecking his pool plans, but instead I used the weather and turned into fun. When the wild winds pulled our kite every which way, I could have just let go and let it blow away, but instead I kept moving around with it, trying to keep it up in the air...just as good teachers remain flexible and are able to take student feedback and create teachable moments.

Lead by Example

2011-07-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

I have been continuing my learning over the weekend from the comfort of my home (and screaming children) "attending" the Reform Symposium or #RSCON3 online. Well, actually, I only got bits and pieces while chasing my kids, but I will be able to continue my learning when the archived sessions are posted online.

Fortunately, I was able to join in with Akevy Greenblatt's session: "Building A More Positive Relationship between Administrators and Teachers." This session reaffirmed what I know to be important when leading and also made me pause to reflect on my practice.

Here are some of the nuggets I took from Akevy's session:

Lead by example. If you want your teachers to use new technology, then you need to use technology. If you want your teachers to differentiate, then you need to differentiate.
I would think that my teachers would say that I do this, although I know there's always room for improvement. When we bought our first SMARTBoard 3 years ago (a portable at the time) I modeled the use of it in a staff meeting. I have read books with teachers in book studies, learning beside them. When teachers have gone to conferences, I've gone with them to continue learning with them and then ask them what they needed to implement what they learned. When we purchased a new reading assessment, I used it to assess 20 students myself. Since all of my classrooms will be implementing the Daily 5 literacy framework (and eventually Cafe)next year, I am currently teaching a summer school class and teaching with the Daily5/Cafe framework.

Put yourself on the hot seat. This again goes with the previous nugget. Akevy talked about sharing a video taped lesson of his own teaching with his staff. Now that's the hot seat! When I was an instructional coach I also shared a video-taped lesson with staff while they practiced using the new teacher evaluation tool to evaluate me. While it was the hot seat for me (who likes watching/listening to themself, let alone with staff watching too?!), but it was great practice for teachers to learn the new teaching rubric and to put myself out there and build trust with them. It is time for me to put myself on the hotspot as the principal...now I just need to figure out when/how. Have any other principals done this? How else have you put yourself on the hot seat?

Talk less, listen more. Show teachers that you value them, their concerns and what they have to say. I have always been a fast paced person and don't feel there's time for "chit chat." Over time, I have learned that this is a weakness and that as the leader, it is essential to take time to build relationships and spend time listening to staff. A couple of books that I have found to be great reads for professional growth in this area are: People First! The School Leader's Guide to Building and Cultivating Relationships with Teachers and Fierce Conversations.

Give teachers freedom, empower them, give them autonomy. Give them the freedom to take risks and try things on their own. This is an area that I hope my teachers would say I do. It is because of allowing a teacher to take a risk that we are now going school-wide with Daily 5 next year. I can't think of a time when I have ever said no to a teacher if they can tell me why their idea is good for student learning.

Ultimately, a teacher-failure is a teacher-failed by his/her principal. This is SO true. As a principal I have had to have some difficult conversations and despite how uncomfortable and hard those conversations are, the only regrets I have ever had is in how long I waited to finally have that conversation. In Fierce Conversations Scott says, "I have not yet witnessed a spontaneous recovery from incompetence." Another quote from Scott that has really struck a chord with me is, "What are you pretending not to know?" It is my job as the leader to provide teachers with the necessary feedback to impact learning.

Don't sugarcoat it! Give candid, evidence-based feedback to teachers and provide robust, follow-up support.
This just piggy backs the above thoughts. When I receive feedback, I don't want it to be sugarcoated, I want real feedback so that I can learn and improve. Susan Scott states, "most people want to hear the truth, even if it is unpalatable" and "There is something within us that responds deeply to people who level with us." We have been taught since we were children "if you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all" so it's only normal to avoid giving someone real, honest feedback. Unfortunately, it does no good for anyone (teachers or students) if we do not give real feedback. In addition to evidence-based feedback, I feel it is necessary to also offer support.

Managing the Teacher Evaluation Process

2011-07-09T12:05:00.001-07:00

Teacher evaluations are a necessary component of every administrators job. Managing the teacher evaluation process is quite time consuming for administrators. Recently I recorded a podcast at Eduleadership Radio with Justin Baeder and another guest principal, Chuck Bell. It was a great opportunity to learn about the process in other states and learn some great tips from them as well. You can download the podcast here. This new series of podcasts with Justin Baeder are off to a great start, so I hope you'll join in me in subscribing to them on iTunes to continue learning from other great principals.

As a side note-recording a podcast was more nerve-wracking than I thought! I wonder how many times I said "ummm?"

Using the iPad to Increase my Productivity

2011-07-04T20:22:00.001-07:00

Even though there are numerous other blog posts by principals using the iPad, I have said numerous times that my blog is a great place for me to reflect on my practice and seek the feedback of others. I have learned a great deal of iPad tips from other princpals, and I will list those blog posts/helpful sites below. I plan to use this post to explain how I am using my school issued iPad to increase my productivity and spend more time in classrooms (my ULTIMATE goal as a principal).

As basic as it sounds, the top 2 reasons I use the iPad more than anything else are to keep up with emails and my calendar. Since I spend more time out of my office than in it, I am able to quickly read emails while walking the hallway and delete, respond or file for action later. I have a busy schedule (what administrator doesn't) so I love having my calendar right there with me. This year I am planning to switch to google calendar so that my secretary can add to my calendar during the day if I'm out and about.

When I am walking through classrooms, I have just used the Notes app on the iPad to quickly type feedback to teachers and email them. We do not have wifi throughout our building, but I could still use the email feature and have this sync when I went near the wifi hotspot. I also emailed these to myself and kept them all in a folder for teacher feedback. So here's what you would actually see me doing when I'm making rounds-when I enter a classroom I would open up a new note and start typing "Dear Ms. Carson, When I visited your classroom..." I will either type one handed (I'm getting good at that) while in the classroom or wait until I get in the hallway if any students seem distracted by what I'm doing. Then I email the teacher the note right away. Then I open my Simple Goals app (see below) and tap on my classroom walkthroughs goal to add another one for the week. Then I go to my clipboard (here's when I need a suggestion) to find my teacher spreadsheet and write the date of my walk through. I still do this because I like to visually see who I haven't been to yet. I would love any app suggestions to still do this and get rid of my clipboard!

I have just begun to use Evernote in place of the Notes app. Since Evernote is a web based virtual cabinet, I love that I can access my notes on my iPad, iPod, or desktop. When typing up teacher feedback, I can also add a "tag" so it will organize my notes by teacher instead of having them all within one of my email folders. The only problem I've found is that when I email the note to a teacher, it goes straight to their junk mail file thanks to our web filter, so I don't think I can use this for my walk throughs.

I keep track of my daily goals with the app "Simple Goals." This is a simple free app that just lets you keep a running total of goals for each week. This is where I keep track of the number of classroom walkthroughs, 1:1 discussions with staff, if I leave my office with a clean desk, and if I exercise (that one is usually a low number!)

I used to be the queen of post-it notes of to-do lists each day, but I have now been using the app "Get it Done." What I love about this app is that I can organize To Do folders and categorize them by when they're do. It is easier on my eyes/brain to just see the list of what I need to do for the day and not my entire list of EVERYTHING! Every time I remember something I need to do, I just add it in there, put a date on it and add it to a special group/folder if I need to. Some of the group/folders I've had running for to-do lists include: staff evaluations, summer school preparation, To Learn, etc.

Those are the main apps I use each day, but I do also utilize the following apps:
-Twitter (only can use this at home, no twitter access at school)
-Google docs
-Google Reader
-Flipboard
-App Shopper (I love seeing when apps are down in price or FREE!)
-Various news apps
-Kindle (I also love that this syncs with the kindle reader on my iPod)
-PowerSchool shortcut (this is our student information system)

The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks and Tutorials

10 Ways to Work Smarter on Your iPad

iPad Resources for Administrators

Blog posts by other principals:
The 21st Century Principal

A Principal's Reflections

My #1 Recommended Resource

2011-07-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to share my favorite resource (and why) with a class of pre-service administrators. The answer to that question is easy for me...twitter. For those of you who do not know what twitter is yet, you have been missing out. Check out this post if you want to know what you’ve been missing out on. Just last week a principal said to me, “isn’t twitter for celebrities?” Sure, twitter is for celebrities and you can use it to follow celebrities if you choose to, but what administrator has time to follow celebrities?

Being a principal (or serving in any administrative position) is a lonely job. As a teacher I enjoyed collaborating with my team and found it easy to collaborate with other teachers. My grade level met almost daily for planning, to discuss benchmark assessment results, bounce ideas off of each other or to just enjoy each others’ company at lunch time. Now as an elementary principal (of the ONLY elementary school in a small district and with no Assistant Principal) I go through my day with no job-alike colleague to connect with. I’ll be quite honest and admit that I didn’t even think I would make it through my first year... until I found twitter half way through that year.

I have developed my own personal Professional Learning Network (PLN) through twitter. I continue my learning every day by reading blog posts, news articles or new research that other professionals “tweet” each day. I can tweet a question and get replies from other administrators almost instantly. Someone recently tweeted the quote “great leaders learn from their mistakes, brilliant leaders learn from other mistakes.” The only way to learn from others is if you are connected. Many of the educators in my PLN are transparent about their learning in their blogs online. Here are just a couple of examples: The Principal of Change and A Principal's Reflections Blogging provides a means to reflect on your practice in a public way to gain feedback from others. At first I was very hesitant about publicly posting my reflections that could be ready by my staff, school board members or parents...but I got over that. I benefit so much from reading others’ blogs, that I now blog too (I am just not that great at keeping up with it).

By following other professionals on twitter I can learn from what they tweet from conferences that I don’t attend. I didn’t attend ASCD, ISTE, or The Sisters’ Daily 5 conferences but I followed others who did and was fortunate to learn from what they tweeted throughout their day of learning. There are also regularly scheduled “chats” each week to get involved in. While I’m sitting at home in my pajamas I can participate in dialogue with others each week for the #cpchat (Connected Principals), #teachchat, #ntchat (learning how to support new teachers), and #edchat (see the links below to find a list of all regularly scheduled chats).

I have made close enough connections with some of the administrators on twitter that I have been fortunate to be able to call on them for help when I need it. There have been a few times when I’ve sent an email during the school day asking for help with something (because twitter is blocked in our building) or spent some late nights in real time chat discussing a current problem in my building and seeking advice (that is not tweetable).

As educators, we must teach students to become lifelong learners. Teachers need to model their love for reading and learning in the classroom. Principals need to model this for their staff. If YOU are not continuously learning and growing as a professional, then the majority of your staff will not either. If you are not going to continue learning, then do not become a principal!

There are many great resources online to learn how to get started on twitter:
Twitter 101 Video
Twitter 102 Video
K-3 Teachers guide to Twitter
10 Steps for Educators new to twitter
List of all education related chats on Twitter

Reflections from 2nd Graders...Why and How are we better readers?

2011-04-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

We LOVE to read and because of The Daily 5 and CAFE Menu, that’s why!

- Our classroom library has more books to choose from.
- I know what I am reading for. I meet MY expectations.
- I’m expanding my vocabulary when I read.
- I like where I get to read during Read to Self and Read to Someone
-I have a goal that I want to meet.
- I am more fluent- I can read faster and not choppy like a robot.
- I’ve learned a lot of new vocabulary (from Mr. Wiggle Worm’s Word of the Day) that I find in my reading.
- I am choosing better books this year to read. Books I really like to read.
- I understand how and why I read. I like Daily 5.
- I pick a Just Right Book on topics I am interested in reading and learning about. I also pick books to read from series I enjoy and authors I like.
- I have more independence when I read.
-I spend more time on Word Work to help me on my spelling words and I find those words in my reading books. I like making connections!
- I know all the words when I read because I have worked on Accuracy this year.
- I realize the meaning of the words from the books I am reading now.
- I am a voracious reader!
- I am reading to learn more.
- I am not reading choppy anymore. I read more fluently.
- I am reading and understanding harder books.
- Reading helps me to learn science and make connections to our science class.