Skill Recovery and Credit Repair Options

I currently developed an intervention plan for Skill Recovery and Credit Repair option using our teacher developed online courses in our eClass system.  eClass is our online portal used for communications between parent, teachers and students. The gist of the plan is that teachers will give students access core academic courses in the portal to attempt learning targets that they were not successful during the regular school day. I am hoping to roll it out in January. Does anyone have ideas on something similar at their school and any suggestions on Credit and Skill Recovery

Teacher Retention and the Retention of New Teachers

A few weeks ago our school had two teachers quit with only one week's notice.  One was from the department that I support.  This happened to me last year as well right before the end of first semester.  It baffles me how some teachers think that this is corporate America and that they can just give a two weeks notice (if that) and not give one care in the world.  This directly affects the students as well as every other teacher in the department.  We had to have 4 teachers and myself the AP go on extended day for two weeks before we found someone.  Although I enjoyed being back in the classroom teaching one period each day, it was beyond stressful to find someone remotely qualified to teach the kids.  What worries me is that many of our veteran teachers are suffering burn out and we are not even done with first semester and we have brand new teachers to the profession who just up and quit and think it's okay not to push through and finish out the year.  We are a Title I school with somewhat challenging students so our teachers bust their tails every day to may learning engaging and personal for each student.  Our teachers are consistently going to trainings done in house by highly qualified teachers who specialize in certain areas.  They work day in and day out and it's driving our very strong teachers out of our school as well as out of the profession.  For me, I lost eight teachers last year in my department for various reasons and this was just my first year as an AP at this school.  I at first thought it was me, but they assured me it was other reasons which I will not mention.  We are trying very hard to change the culture and climate but we are struggling right now.  I know that I cannot do another year of hiring eight new teachers.  I worked from February through June trying to find the most qualified teachers.  I will say this year has been awesome with the teachers I have hired as well as keeping our veteran teachers positive.  It truly has been a change for the best.  But I do not want any of my teachers leaving because we have finally found ourselves in a very upbeat and positive climate within my department.  But my teachers still are burnt out no matter how positive they appear.

Academy Schools

I would like some feedback on schools that have a 9th Grade Academy. My school is in the discussion stage of making some changes to our school. We are in search of ways to foster academic success. There are many topics on the table and we will have more in depth conversations as spring semester begins and we prepare for the next school year. Will someone, who has a 9th grade academy or has experienced this, give me more information about it? How does it work? What are the differences? Have you experienced positive outcomes? What are teachers remarks/concerns? Do you see less discipline issues? Have you been pleased with the academy process? Any information you share will be greatly appreciated.

Block Scheduling ???

In my never ending quest for improved student achievement I have read in an article that block scheduling has given positive results on student achievement.  However, the research in the article was not about block scheduling and there was no data regarding block scheduling, it was just a suggestion on one way to decrease same grade student retention.

I have looked in several databases to find research on block scheduling.  Everything I have come across is either 1.) old research and 2.) research based on post-secondary education or high school.  Has anyone come across any recent research indicating that block scheduling may be beneficial in the middle school grades 6-8 setting?

In my opinion, as we move towards more project based learning and interdisciplinary lessons the way the students would be able to achieve the work completion needed in class would be through block scheduling. I can see where block scheduling would be a benefit but I would like the research to back up my theory.

I look forward to hearing any input that you all may have on the topic.

Celebrations

The graduation rates were released last week and my school results showed that we have doubled our numbers. We went from 25% to 49.5% in one year and also revealed a completion rate of 80%. This monumental increases were accomplished through the dedication of all staff members to embrace the many innovative strategies that were implemented to drive improvement.  Those strategies include:

1. The introduction of the Student Circle of Support Team Concept.  The SST or Dream team as we call it, included the counselors, attendance specialist, social worker, graduation coach and parent/community liaison. The team facilitated the review of the student achievement data and comprehensive needs assessment.  Based on the data, they designed a holistic approach to the evaluation of student achievement, student discipline, and attendance data drilled down to the individual student level.  As a result of this data analysis the team the implemented what is now known as Operation Graduation.  Operation Graduation was a strategic breakdown of the entire population of the school based on cohort.  A personal profile was developed for each student. The students were tracked and assigned priorities based on their risk level toward graduation. 

2. The master schedule and bell schedule were redesigned to reflect a schedule that enables us to develop flexible learning plans for our students.   Flexible scheduling included adding three extra periods to the school day, Saturday School and the summer mini-mester component.  The impact of the teachers and staff who volunteered work these additional hours is truly reflective in the increase number of student accomplishing the goal of graduation.

4. Our Increased Learning Time (ILT) program where students are able to accelerate and remediate their learning based on their individual needs is also reflective of this increase in graduation rate.

Student Discipline and School Climate

Our school climate has gone down hill majorly this year.  We have developed our 9th grade academy to increase student achievement and decrease behavior problems among our 9th grade students.  However, this has not been the case this year.  Our data for 9th grade looks good but our discipline is far from stellar.  All of our 9th grade teachers work their tail off but this year's 9th grade students have been the worst that have come through our school when it comes to discipline.  We only have two Assistant Principal's and we are one AP down from last school year.  Our Assistant Principals have been knee deep in discipline and we can barely keep our head above water.  We try our hardest to support teachers in discipline of their students but we can't keep up.  This has greatly affected our school climate.  Our teachers are so down right now and we have recognized teachers, done breakfast by departments, coffee, etc. to keep our teachers spirits up.  We are just at a loss and our AP's are exhausted and have worked around the clock to help our school.  We are looking towards doing something like a scavenger hunt as well as a night out for the staff.

What do you do?

My project is working with 9th grade students in supporting them academically. I have a group of 70 students that I identified in the summer as being at risk. These students receive a great deal of support through teachers, administration, peer support, and community support. I am concerned, even frustrated, with many of these students. I do a weekly grade check and this week there are many of these students failing 3 or more classes. I do realize they have been identified At-Risk, however, there seems to be no motivation with them at all. In meeting with these students this week, I had one student tell me that he is "going into the music industry so I don't need to graduate" and another tell me that he is "gonna have my own business so it don't matter about my grades." It seems that nothing I do or that the school does is motivating these students. There seems to be no intrinsic motivation. Any suggestions on how to covey to these students the importance of their education? How do I spark a fire? I know we are not the only school that deals with this. I am interested in hearing what other schools have in place to help students.

Creating Awareness

Part of the IB authorization process is creating awareness for parents and the school community. I decided to develop a quarterly workshop call IB MYP101. On October 29th I had my 1st workshop. This workshop was to inform the parents and community about the core tenet of IB, the learner profile. In creating this workshop, I decided to use station to station activities to engage the participants. In one station, I invited a seasoned MYP Coordinator to come speak about the importance of the learner profile to the IB curriculum. Another station, I enlist the services of a community organization and the PTA to organize materials that will help parents through this process. Another station, involved a matching activity that exposed participants to the learner profile vocabulary. The last station was a video presentation of the learner profile. The feedback that from the workshop was very positive. Participants stated that the workshop was very informative and engaging. I would have loved to have had more community members at the workshop. I informed the parents and community two weeks in advance. Yet the turn out was disappointing. How can I increase community involvement for the next workshop?  

Conflict on the job

This year, I have been in conflict between how I view my job versus how school leaders view  my job.   As an instructional coach, I see my role as a support system for teachers.   I monitor instruction, I provide feedback on observations and lesson plans.  I arrange professional development for teachers.   I model lesson and co-teach with teachers.  However, with all of the new mandates on teaching, such as the student growth value, I am feeling the pressure of becoming the middle person for documenting teacher deficiencies for other purposes than helping them to become great teacher, which is an uncomfortable role for me.  I think in the end, it make breakdown the trust and relationship I have built with my teachers.  In the past, I have been to speak to them about their deficiencies in confidence without them worrying about my sincerity, and they have been receptive.  However,  school leaders have been calling meeting with me and the teachers based on my feedback and their desire to weed our ineffective teachers to discuss feedback that would have normally been confidential.   So I am wondering if there is a way to effectively work with teachers,  while being in compliance with what I have been asked to do.

Department Meetings

We had our monthly department meeting yesterday and did an activity where we split teachers in groups and had them focus on the 10 TES Standards as well as the rubric.  We had teachers discuss the difference between Ineffective, Needs Development, Proficient and Exemplary.  What we are finding in our school is that teachers are frustrated because they are not receiving many Exemplary.  We are also finding that the term "Needs Development" has a negative connotation and is quite harsh to give. One thing I will say is that before I share any evaluation where I rate a teacher as ND, I always have a conversation first.  I spoke with my group of teachers yesterday and tried to reiterate that we ALL need growth and development in some areas and it is OK to have areas of ND.  We were also trying to instill that Proficient is the expectation and that it means you are an excellent teacher.  Exemplary is a whole new level. We tried to explain that in order to be Exemplary in certain areas, you have to be worthy of imitation, a role model, as well as a leader.  You have to be CONTINUALLY doing something with leading in each category.  Is this the same in other schools?  How do you communicate to teachers that ND is just an area for growth and your job is to help them to improve, that proficient is amazing, and that exemplary is ROCK STAR?  I just feel that teachers are struggling right now that they don't understand what all goes in to being exemplary.

Summer Reading

For the past 15 years, we have had required summer reading for rising 9th graders. Students select from a wide variety of books and over the summer are required to read. In the first 2 weeks of the school year, students are assessed on the reading and have to complete a book project. What I am seeing is that the majority of students are not doing the reading, therefor, they are failing the assessment. In the third week of school over 50% of students are failing LA. It is becoming very difficult for these students to ‘dig themselves out of the hole.’ I mentioned to our LA department chairs that we may want to re-think our summer program and they were not receptive to the idea at all. Several schools in my county have totally done away with summer reading because of the same reason. Instead, they do a reading project at the beginning of the school year and allow 5 weeks for completion. What these schools are finding is that LA scores are the highest they have been in years. Even after showing the data of success, our department chairs are still resistant to the idea.

I am looking for suggestions of how to address our LA department chairs to re-evaluate the summer reading or ways to encourage (make) our rising 9^th graders read.

Fixing Unforeseen Issues

The past two weeks have been a challenge for me. I had a workshop for the IB-MYP for Maynard Jackson and King Middle schools that did not go over well with the staff members. First, here are some background information for you to fully grasp the issue. The MYP spans from 6 to 10 grades which means the program must align between the 2 schools. IB views the High School and Middle School as one program even if they are in two separate buildings. The challenge I have is working with the High School IB Coordinator to build understanding with the middle staff. I have a every good rapport with my middle school colleagues. I know that the middle school staff is enthusiastic about the IB-MYP. However, the High School Coordinator has a perception that our middle school teachers are not doing enough to prepare the middle school students for the IB-Diploma Programme (DP). A video testimonial was presented in the IB-MYP workshop that casted my middle school colleagues as ineffective. The problem with this video is that I was unaware of its negativity. I did not create the video, the High School Coordinator created it. A lot of my colleagues came to me complaining that the video was a gross inaccurate picture of our middle school. One of the arguments against the video was the fact that the High School had the middle school students for 2 years to prepare the for the DP given that the program starts in the 11 grade. I invested a lot of time building relationships with my colleagues. And I was highly upset that this would now create a rift in that relationship. How do I move forward with correcting this?

Building Capacity Dilemma

My school is in year 3 of our School Improvement Grant and our focus this year is building the capacity of our teachers and teacher leaders so that the work will continue post SIG. My dilemma as the SIG coordinator is that some of my teacher leaders are not on board with the initiatives so much so that they do not read emails or respond to requests from me to complete tasks. My issue is how do I build leadership capacity or sustainability if my teacher leaders are not on board with the plan. I meet with them once every two weeks and any initiatives are discussed with them during a leadership meeting where they have a voice. I encourage them to voice objections or concerns and I address those concerns. The coaches provide support for them as well. I worry that as soon as the  SIG ends, they are going to go back to doing what they were doing before SIG and that would be a great detriment to the students we serve.

Dealing with Students Who Refuse to Go to Guided Study/Advisement

I had a moment today where my frustrations got the best of me.  I have a teacher who continually sends me emails of when my students do not attend her Guided Study, which is a time for students to study, catch up on course work for their classes, etc.  This is done in conjunction with their lunch period.  I have two students in particular who are extremely defiant and refuse to follow my directions.  I have called both sets of parents, had parent conferences with them and their child, given Restricted Lunch for a week where neither student attends, assigned ISS for not serving Restricted Lunch as well as not attending Guided Study, have offered incentives just to go to Guided Study and nothing is working.  I didn't want to assign them OSS because they need to be in school.  However today, they got the best of me and I assigned them OSS because they blatantly told me they will not go.  They do not view this as an actual class so they refuse to go.  My next step will be to find them every period during their GS in the lunch room and escort them to class.  I will continue to monitor their attendance and put them on a Behavior Contract and a Rule 12 if they continue.  I am just at a breaking point because I have never had students refuse to do something I ask of them in regards to being completely defiant.  I even have built a relationship with them since I see them quite often for this repeated behavior.  Any suggestions of other roads of interventions I can take to get these students to attend class?  I physically cannot escort them to class everyday.  I am at a loss.

The Book, Zapp - Leadership and Empowerment

As we progress through this semester,  a book that I read came to mind.  The book is entitled Zapp and the author is William Byham.   The book, Zapp, dealt with the concept of leadership and change.   Byham addressed the need for administrators to empower their staff with the tools necessary to bring about the change that will sustain ongoing success for their schools or organizations.  This book also discussed creating an environment of change through empowering others with the belief that they are stakeholders, which will then lead to a sense of ownership.  Additionally, it discussed how sometimes change starts with one person realizing that change is a part of evolving process that leads to a person or company becoming the best they can be.  The process starts with the realization that there is a need for change, identifying the reason for the change, the end result, and the steps needed to successfully get you there.  As I worked on the culture paper, the book reminded me that leaders have to ensure that every staff member feels empowered and is accountable to the success of the school.  As a leader, this book helped me in the area of empowering others with specific examples, such as positive reinforcement, being a good listener, and facilitating issues, rather than always being the one to solve or make decisions that affect an entire school.  More importantly, the book exemplified how change does not occur immediately.  It may take several days, months, and years.  Change may also consist of several attempts before you begin to see the results of your change.  Lately, I have struggle in my current role.  My school has been making achievement gains, yet in analyzing the culture of the school, I realized that there are still members who do not feel empowered or apart of the school.      I found the book encouraging with its message staying focus and knowing that you will eventually reach your goal.  If you get a chance to read it, I am sure you will enjoy it!!  It is an easy read and more importantly, I think its realistic of what goes on in our schools.

Tutoring Suggestions

I have a tutor program for 9th grade at-risk students and have matched students with an upper classman tutor. The tutors meet with the 9th grader 3 times a week for tutoring, support, accountability etc. A lot of the 9th graders have responded well and appreciate the tutors and support. But I have a handful of students that do not respond at all. These same students are failing classes by not preparing for test, NTI's, do not do homework. Their tutors are getting frustrated and I totally understand.
Any suggestions are welcomed for how to motivate these 9th grade students. How do I get across to them the importance of education and get them motivated?

Major Project Intervention/Rewards

I have just begun the implementation of my major project which focuses on 9th grade repeaters.  We placed our 9th grade repeaters into separate Guided Studies from the general population.  These six Guided Studies take place everyday and are in conjunction with their lunch period.  The biggest issue I am facing is the Guided Study is the ONE class that our students consistently skip and that is the class that I am supposed to visit on a weekly basis.  During this time I plan to meet with each student bi weekly to go through SMART goals with them as well as talk about their attendance, grades, graduation, Maxwell, etc.  Have any of you tried certain incentives that have worked with students in getting them to either come to school and/or attend all of their classes on a daily basis?  Also, my plan is as follow but would appreciate any other advice or feedback you can give me.
1.  Meet with 9R GS once a week- SMART Goals individually, talk about grades, attendance, classes, etc.

2.  Pull student grades and attendance weekly

3.  Call parents of each student and have necessary parent conferences with student

4.  NHS Student Mentors and Parent Mentors once a week working on Math and Language Arts as well as any other academic area

Leading PBIS Professional Development

This coming Tuesday, we are having a professional development day in our county.  My principal (I'm at a high school)  has asked me to lead an hour long session on PBIS.  We have kicked off PBIS this year, and so far, it has gone smoothly.  We have good buy in from the faculty and students as well.  The initiatives we have concentrated on, tardies to class and cell phone abuse, have really improved.  So, I am a little concerned about losing some of this positive energy by making the faculty sit through an hour long training. We all know how teachers hate meetings!  In order to combat this, I sent out a survey last week asking the faculty what additiional information about PBIS they would want to know.  I received some good feedback from this so I plan on addressing those questions.  I also plan on doing a data analysis on the referral data.  I will show our top behavioral concerns and show the improvement we have made.  Finally, I plan on leading a discussion on an area where our data shows we have regressed from last year - classroom disruption.  My feeling is that classroom disruption referrals are up from last year because students can no longer get lost into their cell phone.  I plan on talking about strategies and best practices to increase student engagement in the classroom and to talk about how building relationships with students will lead to less classroom disruptions. Hopefully this will be an engaging hour and we won't lose any of the momentum we have built up.  Can you think of anything I am missing or anything else I should discuss?

You Don't Know Me

There was an incident at my school where I was called to remove a student from a teacher's class. As I began to question the student regarding the incident, she stated:
"You don't know me, you don't care about me even though you all pretend that you care, you really don't. The only time you all administrators want to talk to us is when we get in trouble, then you want to pretend that you care and all this other stuff. You don't even know my name. So if you don't know my name, how can you say that you care?"
This really broke my heart because at my school, we try very hard to provide a circle of support for our students because for a lot of them, we are their last chance at a high school diploma. This young lady touched on a very important issue that I have struggled with the farther away I have moved from the classroom. For over 13 years as a classroom teacher, I prided myself on building relationships and knowing my students. Now all I ever interact with are the students who are being disruptive to the learning environment. This was a wake up call for me to remember that as I go along this journey in administration to remember to stop and get to know my students and not wait until they are sent to my office for an infraction. I would appreciate any and all suggestions for building relationships with students as an administrator.

Professional Development

The more I read the articles and research on teacher preparation, retention, support, and professional, the more I realize we really need to re-think professional development. Last week, I was told that we would need to work with our feeder high school to prepare a professional development workshop for all the teachers during this block that teachers had free.   When the coaches met, we realize that it was going to be difficult considering that the teachers needs varied and our school focuses were different.  So we pondered looking for some common needs because we knew that we had to do professional development regardless.  We finally settled on a professionally development topic, however, I am frustrated with the fact that leaders never consider the real needs of the teachers.  I felt this time could have been used for teachers to plan and collaborate.  Instead, we are occupying two hours of their time with a topic that we felt was general enough to cover several grade spans in order to satisfy our job duties and responsibilities.

Continued Challenges

As I previously stated my major project is to implement the PBIS program. I would not describe it as a well-oiled machine at this point be definitely a work in progress. I have noticed in certain areas student behavior is improving but the commonality is in those areas teachers are consistently rewarding students with school cash.  In the upcoming faculty meeting I will ask teachers to complete a survey that will provide feedback on if they think PBIS is working in the school or not. I expect this survey to identify if the program is effective, ineffective, or not having any major effect on students at all. One of the proposed suggestions to help motive teachers was to have administration reward teachers more consistently with teacher reward cash. The new hope is to have teachers excited about rewarding students with cash so they can receive teacher cash of their own that provides them the opportunity to redeem the cash with adult prizes. Another method to involve teachers is to provide monthly updates of the school behavior data in hopes to help teachers understand what is causing the most problems. I am constantly trying to figure out ways to get everyone motivated about PBIS, so far it has momentum but we still have a ways to go. 

Project framework

     I apologize for joining our blogging community late.  I have been working towards coming up with an idea for my project that would be worthwhile and added value to the students in my building.  After reviewing the Georgia Leader Keys and where the needs of my school coincide I have determined that I would work on intentionally increasing best practices of the special education teachers in my school. 

    I will work with my teachers to increase the usage of engaging activities in their class. As the teachers plan their lesson they will ask, how am I engaging students in rigorous and relevant work? After I have introduced the question to the teachers I will ask them to specifically implement an activity that will provide engagement. I will ask teachers to reflect on a daily lesson to ask themselves, how do I know what they know?  Through the reflection of this question I will guide them towards the use of more formative assessments to determine daily if ALL students are “getting” it.  These formative assessments will become part of their lesson plans and a way to provide gradual release to the students as the student take ownership in their learning.  I would like these guiding questions to become part of their internal dialog when planning lessons. Too often we enter classrooms where the teacher poses a probing question to the class and only a few raise their hand to answer the question.  That students gets the answer correct, the teacher moves on to the next concept or question never realizing that very few students have taken the opportunity to answer. Through increased use of activities that allow students to be engaged in rigorous and relevant work and frequently assessing what the students know I expect to see increased student achievement.

Community Involvement

I need some suggestions with my project. My project is up and running with many pieces are in place. I have started a program for at risk freshman. The program is designed to support struggling freshman academically, emotionally, and socially. I have peer tutors, teacher tutors, and lead teachers that meet with the selected group of freshman. These struggling 9th graders are receiving tutoring 4 days a week during advisement time. The other day is our 'flex' day where I bring in speakers both internally and outside the building. The piece that I am looking for is more community involvement, community members that will serve as role models, mentors, and an additional support member for these students. My problem is that I am having a hard time getting community members to commit to this on a regular basis. Any suggestions are welcomed!!!!

Scathing Letter to Cross Town Rival High School

Our county has 5 high schools.  My school should be a Title 1 school since all of our feeder elementary schools and middle schools are all Title 1.  Right now we have 38% free and reduced lunch but we feel it is because there are some high school students that do not turn in the reduced cost lunch form.  Another high school in our county is situated in the rich part of town.  The "rich" high school saw an increase in their SAT scores last year whereas all of the other high schools in our county saw a decrease.  My high school, which has by far the most at risk students in the county, saw the greatest decrease in SAT scores.  The other piece of information that you need to know is that all of the other high schools, including mine, went to a 7 period day last year.  The "rich" high school fought this and was allowed to stay at a 6 period day.  The rich high school is receiving pressure from the school board to change to a 7 period day this next school year but they are fighting it.  This leads me to my point of this post.  Our local newspaper ran an article in the paper about the SAT scores.  A former science teacher from the rich high school wrote a letter and was published the following week about how changing to a 7 period day caused the drop in scores at the other high schools.  Everyone thought this was rediculous.  The following week we had an anynomous parent write a rebuttal.  This was by far the best editorial I have ever read.  Here is a link to the article:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5KOZ-BTTDQkVGFHMXFCb2R4bzQ/view?usp=sharing

Please take a minute and read the article and help me with this.  Many students have read the article and some feel that they are destined to fail because of poverty.  While I think that everything in the article is true, I do not want the students at my school to feel like they have no chance for success in life.  What message would you send to the students and how would you discuss with them the facts of the article?

Unforseen Challenges of IB Implementation

The first couple of months in this new position have been a challenge. I am currently teaching three classes and doing IB work. Working with the students and familiarizing with IB materials are the easy part of my work load. The most challenging part of my job is working with the parents and community stakeholders. I was unaware of how negative perception about the school would make my work difficult. I was under the assumption that I would be working only with my current students and parents. However, my interactions with the community reveal that I have plenty of work to do to change the negative perception of the school. I have to rebrand. I attended my first community association meeting a month ago. I was met with hostility from a few attendees. To those hostile individuals, I was a representation of the school district. And they had issues with the school district. Fortunately, I had a veteran colleague with me to answer concerns and de-escalate the situation. My takeaway from this situation is to be empathetic but relegate my answer to the things that I have knowledge of. If I don’t have an answer I can state that and request to help find an answer or direct them to the appropriate person.   

Teacher Observations - AP/Department Chairs

I am in a bit of a bind when it comes to teacher observations since both the Assistant Principal's over the department observe for the Brief's and the Formatives.  The Department Chairs of each department help the AP with one brief per semester which is 2/6 observations for the entire school year.  My situation is this:  In both of the departments I support, ESOL and Foreign Language, my department chairs are very generous in giving Exemplary for many standards.  We have a total of 10 standards to rate and usually only 3-4 of the standards are observed in a ten minute brief observation.  I am one who is very cautious of giving the Exemplary rating as Proficient is the expectation for all teachers and that teachers grow throughout the year.  The more you observe them and the actions become constant, the more Exemplary would be deserving.  As an example, I observed one of my ESOL teachers a few weeks ago and gave her proficient's in 4 categories.  This week, our department chair gave all Exemplary's.  I have set up a meeting to discuss this situation and that if an Exemplary or Needs Development is to be given, we should discuss before sharing the observation with the teacher.  I feel like I am going to find myself between a rock and a hard place when it comes time for my next observation and they want to know why they are not Exemplary and "only" Proficient.  My other concern is that the department chairs spend countless hours with our teachers, more than the AP's do at least.  They see them leading and sharing instructional strategies, etc.  I feel that AP needs to be in the loop and therefore the observations need to be discussed before sharing.  Does anyone have any other suggestions about how to be on the same page in completing observations?

Major Project Goals

I have had the chance to determine what my major project will be within my school. The project is to implement a school behavior program known as PBIS. There are several different levels to the program including creating a rewards system for the students that are performing the appropriate behaviors. My goal is to have school wide buy in. As it stands, teachers and students are luke-warm about the program but I believe that is because the rewards are not as consistent as they need to be. I am in search of the proper motivational tool to cause teachers to pass out the school cash we have developed which will hopefully result in more students mimicking the correct behavior to earn the cash. So the more cash that is circulated the more behavior should improve. As students earn cash they have the opportunity to purchase several prizes that have been donated by the surrounding community. As the semester continues I'll try to find the right motivational tool for the teachers to completely buy-in.

Major Project Advice

The last couple of weeks I have struggled with my major project and would really like some input on some topics that I have pondering over.  I really would like for the project to be meaningful to me beyond meeting the requirements for the program.  Therefore, the decision making process has not been easy.   My principal suggested a topic, Blended Learning in the math classrooms, which I really find interesting.  However, I am not sure if I would be effective in leading the professional development without bringing in outside vendors to provide or assist me with the trainings.  My second possibility is to really work on a true collaboration amongst the math teachers, where they are truly collaborating beyond sit down to do lesson planning, when in actuality one person does the plan and puts the team’s names on the plan, but where discuss data, plan activities, discuss re-teaching strategies, and strategies that are working and not working, etc.  For both of these possibilities, I see approaching them similarly, such doing a pre/post survey, tracking professional learning opportunities provided to teachers, an also observing the teachers for implementation.   The last possibility is starting a monthly mentoring program with our GSU interns.  I surveyed a couple of students for interest and they were super excited.   I could really see this as a great project, as well.  In doing this major project I would give the interns the opportunity to choose focus areas for the month, such as classroom management or edTPA standards, in order to ensure the meetings are relevant.  All three of these possibilities are interesting. 

Creating Tierred Support for Teachers

This week, our new interim principal decided to review our tier of support that are provided for our teachers by instructional coaches. At my schools, teachers are placed in 1 of 4 tiers with tier 1 teachers needing the least amount of support and tier 4 teachers, the most intensive support. My assignment was to create the instructional rounds/focus walk protocol and share with the team and also participate in the focus walks. The team used a focus walk document that I had already created to evaluate the teachers and place them in these tiers. This process was completed over the course of two days with discussion times in between. We discovered that we had only a handful of teachers in our building who truly needed the intensive support and that there were best practices happening all over our building.

As a team, we decided that our coaches would provide support as follows:
a. Tier I: One focus walk per week from coach with feedback, Meet with teacher at least 1x each quarter to discuss goals, progress toward goals, etc.

b. Tier II: Two focus walks per week from coach with feedback. Meet with teacher at least 2x each quarter to discuss goals, progress toward goals, etc.

c. Tier III: Two focus walks per week from coach with feedback. Meet with teacher at least 3x each quarter to discuss goals, progress toward goals, etc.

d. Tier IV: Three focus walks per week from coach with feedback. Weekly meeting with teacher to discuss goals, progress toward goals, etc

As a result of the 2-day instructional rounds, we have selected some teachers that will be highlighted during weekly "Spotlight" videos as exemplars for other teachers.

Welcome to GSU Blogger! - Dr. S. Kahrs

Hello Students,

Welcome to GSU Blogger. This blog will serve as an interactive discussion forum where you may share on a wide variety of areas, such as, your thoughts, insights, views, and questions regarding your major project, leadership issues in your school in which you are involved, and leadership successes or challenges you are experiencing. In addition, you may post questions in order to receive the perspectives of your fellow students. You may also post perspectives re: articles from journals or the newspaper, provide your opinion of the article, and ask for other views. The hope is that this venue will provide a forum for rich discussion and feedback between students on leadership issues. Each of you is an experienced educator who has knowledge and perspectives that can be helpful to others. One problem that often occurs in education, is the lack of quality feedback from peers; it is hoped that this experience will be beneficial in providing such feedback.

We will have approximately 10 blogging weeks left in the semester when the blog is initiated. The expectation is that each of you will post a blog every other week and respond to a minimum of one of your classmate’s blogs during the week you do not blog. In an effort to not have this experience become cumbersome, it is up to you when you post and respond during the week; the only requirement is that you participate weekly based on the schedule below. Although there is no prescribed length for your blogs and responses, keep in mind that they should be meaningful. Generally speaking, the top limit for your bi-weekly post should be 500 words.

Even though this is a private blog that is only viewable to those active participants in the course, please note the confidentiality statement below:

Confidentiality: Real schools, real people, and real situations will routinely be discussed throughout this course. Students are expected to maintain professional standards of confidentiality both in and out of class. Whenever possible, avoid the use of names, schools, and other identifying information when discussing events and situations.

In order to help this blog run smoothly I have solicited the help of Dr. Sauers and Peter Coombe. If you have any technical questions, please contact Peter Coombe, coombep@calhounschools.org.  Non-technical questions should be directed to me.  

Week of…	Your Week to Blog	Respond to Classmate(s) Blog
September 21	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward
September 28	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard
October 5	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward
October 12	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard
October 19	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward
October 26	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard
November 2	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward
November 9	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard
November 16	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward
November 23	Thanksgiving Break	Thanksgiving Break
November 30	S. Howard, Skinner, Watson, Wright, Ward	Abdulkadi Popoola, Bankston, Braddy P. Howard

How to Create an Original Post

Please view the video embedded here regarding how to create an original posting to the GSU Blogger.  Direct all technical questions to Peter Coombe at coombep@calhounschools.org.

How do I write a blog post?

When writing an actual post, there are no “official rules”, but here are some guidelines that may help.

• Be concise! Generally, posts should be no longer than 500 words.
• Provide resources for others such as hyperlinks.
• Consider adding/using other forms of media to your posts such as pictures or videos.
• Don’t worry about APA formatting.  Instead, focus on the content of your posts.

What shouldn’t be included in a blog post?

Private information that you couldn’t/wouldn’t discuss in a face-to-face class.  You should consider other means of communication with your mentor or coach related to those sensitive topics.  You should follow the same precautions you do with any written communication.

What if I’m not very tech savvy?

That’s O.K.!  One of our goals in this program is your growth as a professional.  As a school leader, it isn’t acceptable to simply ignore technology.  It is highly likely that students and teachers in your building are already blogging.  The ISLLC, LKES and ISTE standards all include indicators and/or standards related to the importance of technology.