This summer, we took a family road trip to Toronto and Niagara Falls. During our 12-hour drive to and through Canada, we got stuck in a traffic jam just outside of Hamilton, Ontario, due to road construction. While we were sitting there, all yearning to be done driving and out of our vehicle, I began to think about construction, specifically the orange barrels (fun fact—the barrels in Canada were orange and black, not orange and white). (more…)
School of Thought Blog
Orange Barrels and Leadership
Finding Unexpected Community Resources for Your Student Support Network
When a headline broke in USA Today several years back calling Farmington, NM, “the worst place to raise a child,” my school took it personally. Having raised two daughters in the town, my wife and I had often commented to each other what a great community it was, and the great quality schools were part of that discussion. But the article went solely off of data, and I’m sure the authors had never set foot in our town. (more…)
State Summit Follow-Up
State Summits offer National Honor Society (NHS) and National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) members hands-on experiential leadership development. They are designed to unlock the potential of participating students by providing a shared space to learn, grow, and explore ideas together. Back in October 2019, we asked students to provide their own report of the September 12 Arizona State Summit. Now, those students provide a follow-up account of how they applied those lessons from the State Summit. Read the first blog from this author here. (more…)
Cultivating a Culture of Risk-Takers Among Teachers
The focus of any school must be on the student, but emphasizing teacher success pays dividends throughout a school’s culture. Specifically, by encouraging teachers to take risks, we model this positive behavior for students who will need it throughout their academic careers and beyond. Here are five ways we cultivate this at Bernard Middle School. (more…)
Visionary Leadership—Applied
State Summits offer National Honor Society (NHS) and National Junior Honor Society (NJHS) members hands-on experiential leadership development. They are designed to unlock the potential of participating students by providing a shared space to learn, grow, and explore ideas together. Back in October 2019, we asked students to provide their own report of the September 12 Arizona State Summit. Now, those students provide a follow-up account of how they applied the lessons they learned. Read the first blog from this author here.
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The Nonnegotiable Role of School Librarians
What principals know and think about school libraries we have learned largely from our own past experiences and school librarians. I have had the distinct honor and privilege to work with and learn from some amazing librarians over the course of my career. These innovative educators have shaped my belief in the indispensable value of robust school libraries. They also have transformed how I think about learning and how I make decisions as an instructional leader. (more…)
2020 State of the Union Response
“Once again, President Trump squanders a State of the Union opportunity to bolster the success of public schools by proposing only to enrich private schools at public expense. With a fresh infusion of funds siphoned from public services, private entities would enjoy expanded ‘education freedom’ to admit the students they find desirable. But for the 90-plus percent of U.S. students who attend public schools, including students with the greatest educational needs, the administration’s sole education effort would exacerbate an already severe funding crisis. Let’s remember that public education bears the label because it serves the public good and accepts public accountability. Bureaucratic schemes to privatize education—whether as overt as vouchers or as insidious as tax credit scholarships—compromise our public investment in those schools and the education of our nation’s youth.”
—JoAnn Bartoletti, NASSP Executive Director
Student Voice in School Communication
In a world where young people are familiar with opportunities to express themselves online and in person, it is important that we present our students with excellent models of interpersonal communication. Our students come to us with great ideas that they want to express. Why not channel that communicative energy and put it to work to promote your school? (more…)
The Census Is Coming—Are You Ready?
The U.S. Census Bureau will begin its count on April 1, 2020, and principals are vital to its success. Conducted every 10 years, the census seeks to accurately record the population throughout the country, and more than 1 million young children were missed in 2010. More than a typical tally, the results help determine how billions of dollars in federal funding flow into states and communities each year, as well as how many seats in Congress each state and your local school board boundaries are awarded. Of course, some of that federal funding is funneled directly into schools—and principals can be highly effective influencers when it comes to census participation. (more…)
Choose Your Three Words
Reflection is such an important part of the learning process. There was a time in my life when I was all about speed and moving forward—getting to the next thing, checking it off, completing the next task. As I’ve gotten older and wiser, I’ve learned to focus on the balance of slowing down to go faster. I prioritize making time to reflect on what’s been learned or how a skill was executed. I think about what needs to be learned so that I can be and do better. (more…)
Tell Your School’s Story Before Someone Else Does
I know just enough about social media to be dangerous. I grew up in a childhood without cell phones. Your story was told by how you carried yourself and what you accomplished at school, on the playing field, or in your job. Your thoughts and rants were kept to yourself or in your inner circle. As such, I was strongly against a professional social media page and a school page. I felt that it would put our school out in the public eye and leave it open for negative comments that are hard to police. It is difficult enough keeping a handle on the daily and evening activities of a school without tracking social media as well. (more…)
Read This, Save Lives: Creating Safer Classrooms for LGBTQ+ Students
I was a curious student who spent my free periods talking to teachers, and I could find my way around the library blindfolded. But for most of my life, I absolutely dreaded going to school. (more…)
Building CultureCollaborative LeadershipEducation PolicyEthicsLeading LearningOtherschool improvementSchool SafetyWellness
Four Ways to Support Student Well-Being
We seem to be at a place in time where achievement and growth scores continue to dominate the educational landscape, even though these metrics run the risk of overshadowing the students. Fortunately, there are examples of administrations, schools, and districts taking innovative steps to support students beyond academics. Here are four new ways schools and their leaders are supporting student well-being. (more…)
Strategies to Curb Teacher Burnout
We have had a higher turnover rate of teachers the past few years, even as fewer individuals are entering the profession. It is no secret—we hire teachers, they become familiar with our staff, students, and procedures, and then some leave, creating a hole in the continuity of our schools. We then have to scramble to replace and retrain them, ask staff to spend hours to support the new teachers (which they always do without hesitation), only for it to happen again. (more…)
Leading Through Crisis
This fall, the Science Leadership Academy faced its biggest challenge in the 13-year history of the school. After leasing our charming but limited space for many years, we were scheduled to move into a refurbished co-located facility. This was a watershed moment for the district, as it marked the first time in recent memory that two existing schools—one citywide magnet and one neighborhood school—would be co-located in the same facility. The district was committing $23 million to the renovation, and it was seen as a potential roadmap for a district with many severely underutilized facilities. We’d spent the better part of two years preparing—designing the facility, getting to know each other’s faculty, and prepping for the students from both schools to get to know their new neighbors in a way that was powerful and positive. (more…)
Building a Positive School Culture, The Sundevil Way
There are several components to building a positive school culture and multiple ways to go about it. Building culture never stops and is always in development—here’s how our school got started on our journey to create a cohesive, positive, kind, and caring culture. (more…)
Five Reasons to Encourage Extracurricular Activities
Our world emphasizes teamwork, doing a job well, and being able to lead and follow—all skills students can learn and develop through extracurricular activities. Students who participate in extracurricular activities at my school in Montana have significantly higher GPAs and graduation rates than students who do not. Here are five reasons I encourage students at my school to participate in extracurricular activities: (more…)
Be the Advocate Education Needs
The annual 2020 NASSP Advocacy Conference heads to the Washington, D.C., metro area this March. Time is running out to secure your free registration and guarantee your chance to advocate on Capitol Hill for better education across America. (more…)
Using Google to Promote Teacher Collaboration
While various Google applications such as Google Drive and Google Docs are great tools to use with students, they also can dramatically increase teacher collaboration in schools. Administrators can play an important role in encouraging collaboration by introducing these tools and encouraging their use, as we did at our middle level school. (more…)
Building CultureCollaborative LeadershipCommunicationInnovationLeading LearningOtherTechnology & E-learning
Human Capital Management: Sowing the Seeds of Potential
While attending last summer’s National Principals Conference, rock star principal Jason Markey gently guided us through the dimensions of NASSP’s new Building Ranks™ framework. As the day unfolded, my eye was drawn to one dimension: Human Capital Management. I had never heard of this concept, and to be frank, it seemed sort of archaic and of another century. Managing people as capital? It didn’t sound at all like something I wanted to be involved in. (more…)