Homecoming Week!!

Eagle Pride!!

We enter homecoming week in the 4th week of the school year. At the same time, we are celebrating our 50th Anniversary as a school, a result of consolidation on the part of our twin communities of Prairie du Sac and Sauk City that at the time was anything but assured. Big events are in store for all of us this week: 

• Dress up Days:
• Monday - Pajama Day
• Tuesday - Blaze Orange & Camo Day
• Wednesday - Would You Still Be My Friend if I Wore This? Day (Best name ever!)
• Thursday - Decades Day (Each class is assigned a decade)
• Friday - School Spirit Day
• Bon Fire - Thursday Night from 7:00 - 9:00 pm. 
• Home Volleyball Game on Thursday Night
• Our Homecoming Game Friday night against a Waunakee team a half game behind us in the conference standings with an identical 2-3 overall record!
• A 50th Anniversary Celebration and fundraiser after the game at the Dorf Haus in Roxbury with a live and silent auction. (Proceeds are going to new bleachers in the South Gym.)
• A performance by the Alumni Marching band in the lead up to the game Friday.
• And capped off by the Homecoming Dance Saturday night in the South Gym. 

As principal, I have a love/hate relationship with Homecoming. I love the energy a great week of activities bring to our student body, our staff, and our classrooms. Energy is a key component to learning and I know that our great staff will do amazing job keeping that energy focused!! I love it because of what it is: a remembrance of our history and a time to welcome home alumni who have gone into the world to share their  gifts!

But I hate Homecoming too. Like I sometimes hate Prom. Teenagers, being teenagers, will occasionally have a difficult time channeling all this energy in positive directions. Sometimes, Homecoming week can spiral rapidly into a time of tragedy. I remember Homecoming my sophomore year of high school, when a senior football player was run over by a fully loaded hay wagon during a misguided tradition involving dozens of 17- and 18-year-old and alcohol. His near fatal accident and the mass athletic suspensions that followed, certainly made Homecoming a different experience for everyone involved. 

So, in what is only the first time of many that you will hear this from me this week: Eagles, take care of each other this week. Don't let each other do anything stupid that will endanger their, your, or any one's future! Have fun, but be safe! And remember, Mr. Harnisch, and the rest of the SPHS staff, love you very much! 

Let's have a great week!

Everything is becoming a bit more clear:

I've spent the last three months assessing who we are as a school, and what we need to do in our future to become the school we need to be. I have listened to staff, and students, and parents, and community members. I've reviewed our programming and, to a lesser extent, our curriculum, for areas of strength and for where we fall down. I feel like I am approaching a point where we can craft that shared vision of where we need to focus our energy to become the school we need to be. In leadership team and general staff meetings over the next few weeks, I will again focus our attention on that shared vision and, with the next revision of ARP almost behind us, we'll begin to build the school of our dreams. I'm looking forward to it!

To that end, I attended a conference put on by AWSA last Tuesday called "Leading the Big 3;" the "3" being Common Core Standards implementation, implementation of a new assessment system, and the birth of our new Educator Effectiveness model for professional growth. The upshot of the conversation was that these "Big" initiatives are a game changer for public education; that the three of them, working in concert, represent a paradigm shift for all of us, whether we are willing to believe that or not. (I tend to believe it.) 

The problem, as identified in the conversation, is that because it is a paradigm-shift, leaders at the federal, state, and district level have done a spectacularly poor job of leading the change. Most of the time, we have been unable to even clearly articulate WHAT the change is, much less WHY we should change or even HOW we can make the changes in the time frame we have been granted. 

I was pleased to hear a few things:

1. AWSA, DPI, and others have collaborated to create 1-page documents for each of the "Big 3" that are clear, concise, and understandable.
2. There seems to be a growing consensus that the work of this change cannot be accomplished without large-scale, whole-district, collaborative efforts involving all of our staff.
3. That a highly functional Professional Learning Community is the framework best suited to making these changes and that is because the work of a PLC (Identify what we want students to know, figure out how to know if students know it, and figure out what we will do when students don't know it) IS the change that these "3" initiatives are asking us to make!!

So, what implication does that have for our future? Are we a PLC? Or is PLC just something we do? That question and the difference between "being a PLC" and "doing PLCs" will be central to our work over the next few months and years!

Things I am reading and thinking about this week:

Eight Leadership Essentials by Eric Sheninger
I feel like Eric is one of the better principals in America. (Of course there are lots of principals, so even being in the top 1% would make him one of the top 1,300 principals. Lots of good ones is my point. Anyone following the debate about the "Bammys" over the weekend will understand why I felt the need to make that.) anyway, Eric's list here is a pretty good summary of some of the behaviors I try to exhibit in my leadership. Most of you are in a unique place to assess how successful I am at that endeavor.

Educating Parents about The Common Core by Kristen Swanson
With the ongoing debate about CCSS, it is only a matter of time that we in SPSD face a challenge from someone about CCSS. So, here is a good resource to engage parents in the debate pro-actively.

A Framework For Inquiry by David Truss
Using Inquiry as an instructional model is gaining traction as a mainstream strategy to encourage authentic learning. Here is a framework to begin the discussion about stages of inquiry and to begin to help students work through an inquiry lesson.

Why I Took Facebook and Twitter Off My Phone by Chris Wejr
My name is Chad Harnisch and I am addicted to my phone. Admitting we have a problem is the first step to solving it, I'm told. Chris is a very connected principal and reading that he removed these tools from his phone makes me wonder if I can do the same thing. (Last week, comedian Louis C.K. ranted to great effect about the dehumanizing nature of smart phones on the Conan O'Brien show, I believe.) I'm still using my phone like an addict, mind. But I'm thinking about not using it so much. We'll see what happens.


Not "Broken," But Not "Fine" Either by Will Richardson
Diane Ravitch and Will Richardson are two of the smartest critics of the modern educational reform movement; though they have different positions on what the alternative should be. This short blog post is a good read, but the real gem is to click on the link will provides in the last paragraph and read the exchange between the two of them in the comments of another blog.

That's all...be careful out there!!