Direction, Alignment, and Commitment

From February 2017 through October 2017, I was a member of Cohort 1, of the Margaret Waddington Leadership Initiative (MWLI), a collaborative effort of the Center for Creative Leadership and the Vermont Principal's Association. This piece is adapted from the reflective writing I produced about the MWLI.

A couple of years ago, I finally heard the feedback that I needed to set a vision, or Direction, for my old school. It was time; I was finally able to feel confident setting a vision. My last year at that school was filled with my struggles to Align the staff and the programs to the vision. I knew then, and now have the words for the idea, that I did not have the Commitment of others to make this vision a reality. 

Fast forward a couple of years and things are different. At my current position, I’d planned to set a vision for the school after my first full year (and a process of much listening and observing). The craziest thing happened – Brownington Central School was totally ready and waiting for a vision to be set before Christmas. I had to double check my assumptions, and the staff confirmed that they were ready. So, I launched the Brownington Bridge to the Future. This Direction is to use Social-Emotional Learning and Student Engagement in Learning to lead all of our efforts. Since it already fit with our mission statement, it was an easy sell. I think that the staff was pretty well Committed to this, so that leaves only Alignment to worry about. That will be my role as supervisor – make sure that we stay aligned to the direction.



A CCL book on DAC can be found here.

SBI for Feedback

From February 2017 through October 2017, I was a member of Cohort 1, of the Margaret Waddington Leadership Initiative (MWLI), a collaborative effort of the Center for Creative Leadership and the Vermont Principal's Association. This piece is adapted from the reflective writing I produced about the MWLI.

I really like the simple, straightforward approach to feedback that is SBI. Tell the person the Situation about which I want to comment, tell them the Behavior I noticed, and then tell them the Impact the behavior had. I struggle with how to put the impact onto students instead of on me for feedback that is not about interpersonal behavior. CCL teaches that the impact can be about me or others present. Since it can include “work outcomes” I guess that I can use it with teachers. 
Here is an imaginary example (I have been using this with real teachers and worry that I would break confidentiality and trust with a real example):

Mrs. Jones, earlier during 6th grade social studies, when you told the students that they can choose the way they would be assessed, they got excited about this project in a way I haven't seen from them.

While this example seems a little stilted, the lesson learned is to be specific about the situation, the behavior and the impact when giving feedback.




Related Article
Feedback You Can Fathom

Teaching Principal Revisited

I have been a full time principal for about ten years. A few years back, I took on teaching the sixth grade social studies class at the same time. I wrote a mighty fine blog about it: http://principalspov.blogspot.com/2012/11/top-ten-benefits-to-being-teaching.html. I was a social studies teacher before becoming a principal. During my first few years in the classroom, I taught sixth grade. Being a teaching principal was a good experience, but proved to be too difficult to try again.

However, since December 4, I have taken on a 75-minute math class. You see, our 4th/5th grade math/science teacher is out on maternity leave, and the longterm sub I hired decided this was not the work for him. I have been unable to find someone to take the rest of the leave. So, we have been cobbling together the instruction for these kids. 

Our interventionist is planning and sometimes teaching the science for both 4th and 5th grades. She works with whatever daily sub we find to make sure the students are still getting some science. One of the special educators had been co-teaching 4th grade math and has taken over the full teaching of that class. That left only 5th grade math. The interventionist wasn’t available as she was busy teaching 7th grade at that time. The special educator had to deliver other services during that slot. That left us no other option but me.

I am loving it. I am learning tons and getting to know this group like no other in the building. I have earned some capital with the elementary teachers as I try to learn how to use Eureka Math (nee EngageNY). Had attended the training in August 2016 and had exposure going back a year or two before that. I thought I understood the program on a superficial level. Well, now that I have taught it for eight weeks, I can say that Eureka is not a script that any untrained person can follow. We need real teachers who understand math and math pedagogy to make sense of the program. We need real teachers who can assess where the kids are. We need real teachers to make real educational decisions.

I’m not sure I fit that description, but with some help and lots of trial and error, I am making it work. That said, I can’t wait for the teacher to return from her leave, and I’ll miss this class at the same time.

cross posted at Connected Principals

They Should Know Better...

They should know better than to:

Talk out of turn,

Argue with each other,

Ignore the rules,

Disrespect adults,

Give up quickly,

Choose so poorly,

(insert your least favorite student behavior here)...

... but they don't. 

They don't know better. Many students struggle to accept authority, think for themselves, or manage their own emotions. Students affected by poverty or the opioid epidemic are not getting many of the basic social-emotional skills they need. They don't arrive at our schools with the Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision-making that we believe they need to be successful students and members of society (see CASEL, https://casel.org, for loads of info).

They need us, the adults at school, to teach them. Whether we teach them through a formal curriculum (such as Second Step), a classroom approach (such as Responsive Classroom), school wide expectations and celebrations (as included in PBIS), or in the "hidden curriculum" so many of us have always been sure to focus on, it is now a necessary part of many public schools to teach students how to get by in a community. Kindergarten teachers are chuckling now that the rest of us have caught up to them; they've been teaching the "hidden curriculum" for ever. The problem is that kids are starting school with so few of these skills mastered that it takes far more than one year to catch up. We have to teach social-emotional skills through the grades.

Many teachers start their career thinking that they will focus mostly on academic skills. People dream of teaching kids to read in first grade, divide fractions in sixth grade, or recite Shakespeare with high school juniors. When they hit reality and realize that teaching involves tons beyond the content, some teachers run with it. Other teachers start complaining that the students should know better. Well, they don't; it is our job to teach them. When we put in the time to teach Social-Emotional skills, fractions and Shakespeare are not far behind

cross-posted to Connected Principals

Lunch and Recess, Positive Climate, part 5

At many schools, the cafeteria and the playground are behavior hotspots. It stands to reason that those two places, during lunch and recess, will be the least structured. Less structure leads to bad behavior. Many principals shudder at the prospect of lunch duty and then spend the afternoon dealing with problems from the playground. That used to be me and Wolcott Elementary. Well, the playground used to be tough, the cafeteria has been easy for years.

You see, many years ago, the Wolcott teachers began eating lunch with their students; it was their duty instead of recess. Every day, every class is joined at their table(s) by their teacher or one of the specialists. The adults eat and talk with their students. The benefits are easy to see. The caf is humming but not loud. The adults and students are mostly calm. Small problems between kids get noticed right away and never become big problems. Teachers keep cliques from getting out of hand and loners from being too lonely. The Wolcott Caf is a civil place to eat.

So, while the caf has not generated discipline referrals for a long time, the playground has changed much in the last few years. Five years ago, there were frequent discipline problems that started on the playground. There small fights, arguments, frustrations over sports or friends. The Paraeducators that covered recess felt like the area was too large to supervise well. So, four years ago, we found a way to increase recess supervision by 50% -- we added one monitor to our old schedule of two monitors. This increase made a difference right away as more eyes-on led to earlier intervention.

A couple of years later, we noticed that the remaining discipline problems were mostly from the end of recess line up. The procedure was to line up each class, wait for quiet, then send in the best behaved class. The problems here were many. First, instead of calming down kids while they lined up, many kids fooled around in line, got in trouble, and re-entered the building more escalated. In their effort to get a quiet line, the monitors were also getting more upset (thus making referrals for things like dropping gloves in a puddle or talking too much at recess). The recess committee (the paras, the principal, and the counselor) agreed to stop lining up the kids at the end of recess. After a flawless pilot, we gradually spread this to all grades. Now, at the end of recess, on monitor goes into the driveway to signal that recess is over (and provide crossing guard services). One monitor leads the students into the building, while the third brings up the rear.

This last bit about splitting up the responsibilities of the monitors at the end of recess came out of a great process (in fact, much of our best change came from this as well). The recess monitors meet every week as a committee. We discuss rules, challenging student strategies, playground conditions and more. This year we spend some time carefully defining exactly what our Handbook means by "Active Supervision." Even though most of what we decided was already in place, having it all written out solved a few small problems and will allow new recess monitors to fit in even faster. We plan on including the document we created in next year's Staff Handbook.

These changes: building relationships with the kids, increased supervision, changes to procedures, and clarification of the responsibilies of the adults has led to a school with few recess discipline referrals and a peaceful cafeteria.

(Hmmm...relationships, supervision, procedures, responsibilies. Sounds like I am describing some sort of schoolwide behavior approach.)

Improving climate and student behavior has been a major focus of the last few years at Wolcott Elementary. Now that the fruits of our labor have become apparent, it is time to share what is working. Our positive behavior data looks great, our numbers of discipline cases keeps dropping. There are many factors; this was another one.