So What? As the new school year approaches, many principals around the country will be implementing a new teacher evaluation instrument. As you visit teacher classrooms looking for specific indicators, I encourage you to ask the simple question, “So What?” These two words can cause you to go beyond the surface and get a deeper understanding of what is really taking place in any classroom. For instance: So what if you recently joined twitter! So what if you implemented Edmodo! So what if you give formative assessments! So what if you plan and prepare every lesson! So what if you give a number or letter (grade) to a student! So what if you listen and respond to active parents who have strong opinions on the issues that particularly affect their children! I could go on and on and on…. So… What could you add to this list?
Helping Children Around the World to Read and Learn Center for New Principals Welcome to the NASSP Center for New Principals! Whether you are new to the principal’s position or new to the school, the first few years are likely to be your most challenging. NASSP provides resources, assistance, and support to meet your needs as you improve your school. You’ll find advice from experienced principals, quick tips to help you day to day, and publications focused on specific issues to help new principals build on and improve their knowledge and skills as learning leaders. For regular updates and news of note, follow the CNP on Twitter and ScoopIt! You can also network with other new principals by joining NASSP's School Leaders Network for New Principals on EdWeb. The resources in this center are sorted in a variety of ways, making your search on a specific topic quick and efficient: Topics of special interest for new principals, online resources for new principals, and reference materials for download. Can’t find a specific topic of interest? New!
Thoughts on Will Richardson’s fine 19 Bold Ideas for Change in Education. Enjoy the short video above- it is very much worth the six minutes. It is the time of year when many are looking ahead to opening of the school year faculty and departmental meetings, so it is a good time to start sharing valuable short videos which can be used for inspiration and illumination at these meetings. This six minute video is a great candidate (and I intend to share a list soon); it is a very current (ISTE 2012) talk in which author and provocateur Will Richardson lays out his challenge to us: Bold Ideas for Change in Education. (Another alternative would be Will’s TEDx talk.) Consider the opportunities: ask educators in groups to identify their bold ideas first, and compare; ask them to watch and discuss which bold ideas make sense and how might they apply them, which don’t and why not, and what original ideas do they have. From Lisa Nielsen’s blog I’ve copied at bottom of this post the list of 19 bold ideas for easy reference. A few comments: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. b. c. Like this:
The 6 Characteristics of A Successful Educator Jessica Hagy, a contributor in Forbes, has made an excellent account of the 6 main characteristics of people you should be around. While checking her article I instantly remembered the article I wrote a year ago called the 21st century teacher skills. There is a huge similarity between the two but what really attracted me in Hagy's post and which pushes me to share it with you here is the awesome illustration she employed. She used some catchy sketches that are alone enough to give you the gist of it all. Going through her list I found out that those are the same characteristics educators and teachers need to look for and hence we entitled this post The 6 Characteristics of a Successful Educator. Read and share with your colleagues. 1- The Instigator This is someone who motivate you, fills you with inspiration, boost your moral, inspires you, pushes you to act, and always show you the filled part of the cup. 2-The Cheerleader This is normally your supporters and fans . 3- The Taskmaster
New Help for School Administrators: Programs and Initiatives Offer Guidance Support for school leaders is on the rise. Principal Mike Chappell appreciated the focused nature of the University of North Carolina’s Higher School Performance Program. Credit: Mike Chappell "[The principalship is] a position that is absolutely critical to educational change and improvement. A good principal can create a climate that can foster excellence in teaching and learning, while an ineffective one can quickly thwart the progress of the most dedicated reformers."-- Richard Riley, secretary of the U.S. Riley's words, spoken during one of the Department of Education's Town Meetings in June 1999, echo the sentiments of educators and policy makers throughout the country. All that's changing, though, as more and more local, state, and national education entities hold their principals accountable for the success and failure of their students. That's as it should be, says Vincent L. Combining Theory and Practice Help from Critical Friends Reflections of a PEP Alumnus Portable Knowledge
ARTICLES: 21 Solution-Focused Techniques © 2011, Coert Visser Several informal surveys have given an impression of the relative popularity of different solution-focused techniques. The following 21 techniques seem to belong to the most well-known and popular solution-focused techniques: scaling questions, the past success question, the preferred future question, the platform question, the exception seeking question, reframing, indirect compliments, the miracle question, summarizing in the words of the client, the what-is-better question, normalizing, the usefulness question, the observation question, the perspective change question, the coping question, the continuation question, the prediction suggestion, leapfrogging, and mutualizing. Below is a description of these techniques. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. What keeps you going under such difficult circumstances? 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
The 21 Signs you are A 21st Century Teacher Teaching in the 21st century is definitely not an easy task. Students are digitally focused and have more free access to information challenging thus the traditional prototypic picture of the teacher as the knowledge instigator. Engagement is also another serious issue that makes educating such kind of students a real nightmare. It takes so much creativity, originality, and novelty from the part of teachers to get students motivated and engaged. Technology has the cure but this cure can not be effective unless teachers know how to use its prescription. Another resource which I highly recommend for any 21st century teacher is the awesome learning community called Simple k-12. I am mentioning Simple K 12 here because what they offer clicks in with the general theme of Educational Technology and Mobile Learning and also because It is a an inestimable source for professional development for teachers and educators.
Making learning Visible (John Hattie) Auckland University Professor John Hattie has recently authored a study, based on research into 83 million students, studying effective teachers around the world and has come up with some reassuring results for creative teachers. It's all about trusting relationships and 'oodles of feedback'. Note - it is not about national testing, our government's highly unoriginal plan. Click here for latest blogA link For more undated thinking about Hattie It seems hard to avoid the brief press releases of Auckland University Professor John Hattie's research in our newspapers. Most teachers by now will know the main findings of Hattie's research from his previous papers and creative teachers will be reassured that his research backs up intuitive ideas gained from their experience. What doesn't 'work' includes class sizes,homework and school type and he doesn't even mention our current governments misguided focus on national testing. He also says that his book is not about qualitative studies.
10 Things in School That Should Be Obsolete Flickr: Corey Leopold By Greg Stack So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling — it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use. 1. COMPUTER LABS. At Northern Beaches Christian School students learn everywhere. 2. 3. 4. 5. Corridors at Machias Elementary are used for informal learning 6. 7. 8. Learner Centered Classroom at Riverview Elementary School. 9. 10. Greg Stack is an architect for NAC Architecture and specializes in developing best practices for the planning and design of educational environments.
Seizing the Moment for Mathematics - Getting Smart by Tom Vander Ark - William Schmidt, Michigan State University, may be the most widely respected math researcher of our time. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and a fellow of the American Educational Research Association. He has long been a critic of state math standards, “For years now it has been clear that the U.S. mathematics curriculum is a mile wide and an inch deep, and that the fragmented quality of mathematics instruction is related to our low ranking on international assessments.” Schmidt recently used compared the Common Core State Standards to the standards of other nations. As he reported in an Education Week, “The common-core math standards closely mirror those of the world’s highest-achieving nations.” Schmidt’s international comparisons have identified three key characteristics: Schmidt concludes that. For related coverage, see this great article in the San Berdardino Sun: Getting to the Core of Education For more Common Core on Getting Smart, see