Totally Jazzed to be an Eagle!!
Pretty exciting times for me. Any change, as I discussed last time, brings a certain amount of anxiety. The flip side of anxiety, of course, is excitement and that is where I find myself today, on Day 2 of my tenure as Sauk Prairie High School principal! In fact, being a bit of a dork, I even snapped a photo of my office yesterday, before I started doing any customization, just so we can all look back and see if I make any changes to even this small environment. :-)
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| Principal's Office - Day 1 - July 1st, 2013 |
Learning, Learning Learning:
I am a learner, first and foremost. I know that my learning is a big part of the reason why I am so excited to begin the work of leading SPHS...because there is so much to learn!! I have 28 meetings scheduled with staff members before the end of the month. (I am hopeful that we'll have even more!) And in each of those meetings I get to meet someone new, learn about their history, their lives, and their hopes and aspirations for our school. I've scheduled four listening sessions with students in the next two weeks. In each of those, I get to learn about their expectations, interests, goals and dreams for their future and how they hope their school can help them reach those things.
I am meeting everyday with my wonderful administrative assistant, Marcia Colby, who is constantly teaching me new things about my new home. (And, because I have an annoying habit of using unnecessarily complex words to express simple ideas in an attempt to convince everyone of my intelligence, I am teaching Marcia new words. Yesterday it was "Pavlovian." By the way, the only way that happened was because Marcia was brave enough to call her new boss on using a word she didn't know. It is only through that kind of bravery, the bravery it takes to admit we don't know something, that any of us can learn anything. Something to keep in mind always.)
On Monday, I am meeting with our HS Administrative team. I am eagerly anticipating all of the things Aaron, Laurie and Shane have to teach me about our school. (Hopefully, I'll be a lead learner there and share a few things with them as well, or I may not be needed here very long!)
In addition to all of that, things all of you likely know without thinking about are the kinds of things that are taking up a ton of my brain processing time right now. Learning a new phone system, a new computer network, a new school budget, a new set of community supporters, even the floor plan seems impossibly complicated to me right now:
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| Though I can't believe any of you don't have to think about that!! Holy complicated, Batman!! |
So, here you go, the inaugural:
Things I'm Reading and Thinking about this Week, 07/02/2013:
I am concerned about the future of public education. I do think we run the risk of obsolescence if we cannot figure out a way to be more flexible and responsive to the changing world around us. This author points out some of the reasons why we have to change and adapt to the world we find ourselves in or we will be pushed to the side. Inherent in this is a concept I read about recently in "Humanize," a book by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant, where they talk about how "Best Practices" are killing organizations. They don't apply that concept to schools, but the message may be the same: If we just keep copying the things that have worked for other schools in the past, we will never catch up to a world where the rate of change is accelerating. We need to embrace the idea of "Next Practices" and be willing to take a chance on them, even if no one has ever done it before!!
Performance is an inherent part of what a gifted educator does, but I am a little worried about the analogy this author uses here. Isn't teaching more of and interactive experience than acting? Shouldn't "audience feedback" change the instructional practices more swiftly than it does for the acting process? Either way, the concept that professional development needs to be more "practice" and less "theory" is a solid one. How do we do that since most professional development happens on days when kids aren't present? How can we change the paradigm to allow for this?
I read Kristen all the time. She is one of my favorite thinkers/writers about education in America. This short but effective post asks us to reject the time-honored belief that summer is planning time for teachers. How can it be if we are supposed to adjust our instruction based on what our students need and we don't yet know our students? Make summer about your learning. Then when you have students again, make what you learned serve their learning needs in they way they need you too. Sounds about right to me. (Though flies in the face of what we just talked about in the previous post. Guess we need year-round school!!) (The year round school thing was a joke!)
I'm interested in taking the cap off of what students can achieve. Not sure I agree with the premise that rubrics set a cap on excellence and kids won't exceed it, but I'll think more about it now that I've read this perspective.
I have a little bit of a man-crush on George Couros. He writes frequently and eloquently about the challenges of educational leadership and the need for updating our practice. This post talks a little about Twitter and how it can be effectively used and helps to combat some of the persistent old-media criticism of it as a medium. Just something to think about if you're interested in Twitter.
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