The Center of Learning - Parent Connection (Part 2: Article Study)

Image via CrunchBase

Last week's PTO meeting proved to be a positive night of learning for all parents who attended.  As per my last post, The Center of Learning - Parent Connection (Part 1: Twitter Workshop), the evening began with a brief tutorial on how parents can set up a Twitter account and start following handles and hash tags that would be most beneficial to them.  The meeting went as normal, with the principal's and committees' reports.  A discussion was held regarding various methods that the PTO uses to communicate with families and how to continually improve in this area.  We had approximately 30 people at the meeting.  This was great!  We invited room parents to come to keep informed.  Many of them did; however, there were many who attended the meeting because of the article study we were holding.

I fully expected that when the meeting ended a number of parents would leave and we would be left with about half of the group for the article discussion.  I would have been very happy with this turnout for our first one.  But, to my surprise almost no one got up to leave when we said we were going to hold our discussion. This was encouraging!

Dr. Robert Brooks (bio)

The prior week we sent out the article with the following invitation:

Join the PTO at our next PTO meeting where we will discuss PTO business followed by a more detailed discussion and study of an article by Dr. Robert Brooks, entitled: Mistakes: What Parents Can do to Help Their Children be Less Fearful about Mistakes and Setbacks, http://www.education.com/reference/article/mistakes-parents-do-help-their-children/.Take a few minutes to read the article and come ready to share and learn as members from the BT community explore this topic in greater detail.

I began the discussion by explaining that we all have success stories and not-so-successful stories about our parenting skills and practices.  The discussion was designed to draw upon the cumulative knowledge of the group while using Dr. Brooks' article as a guide for the conversation.

I must say that I was very nervous when I threw out the first topic and no one said anything.  Who could blame them.  With thirty parents in the room, who was going to be the first person to share a potentially embarrassing comment about how they handle mistakes and what they model for their children?  So, I started and as I talked what began to happen was a gradual increase in the comfort level in the group.

I am not sure if they expected me to only talk about all of the amazing things that I do as a parent to raise the perfect principal's children, but that was not the case.  I shared things of which I was proud AND things that were my mistakes.  I think it was important that the parents understood that this was not going to be a lecture about good parenting.  It was going to be an honest discussion of a topic with which we all struggle as parents.  After about 15 minutes people were chiming in and adding to the conversation in wonderful ways!

More than the learning that we gained from the discussion of the article, I was most proud of the way this group of parents (many of whom did not know one another) came together to talk as a community about raising our children.  Fears were shared, hopes were shared, tips were shared, pitfalls were shared; but, most of all a connection was shared.  None of us have all of the answers, but together we can help and support one another.  This fits in very well with our school theme, which is: Better Together.

I know that this is not ground breaking in any way; however, I feel as though it was wall-breaking in some ways. Parents opened up with one another, they got to see the parenting side of their principal (for good, bad, or indifferent), and we learned a thing or two about making mistakes.

Hopefully we are making strides in the direction I mentioned in my previous post:

"I want Bear Tavern to be the center of learning for the whole community."

I can't wait for our next discussion!

Related articles

• The Center of Learning - Parent Connection! (Part 1: Twitter Workshop)

Yes, Another "I Love Evernote" Post

I know, it's nothing new, but I have really started to hit my stride in using it and wanted to share. I know that I don't even use half of the features that Evernote includes yet I am still blown away by this phenomenal principals' companion.  Let me start by saying that I have tried many note-taking apps and programs in search of the one with which I could finally settle down and have a long and happy life.  I may be overstating this a bit; however, among tools for doing my job more efficiently, Evernote is one of the best that I have found.

 There are many reasons that I have gravitated toward this tool as a staple in my electronic toolbox.  As a principal I work with immense amounts of text, media, and information.  Having a place to organize this is essential.  I am working to transition from the lovely piles on my desk to a virtual set of piles, files, and baskets.  Evernote gives me a place to store everything.  At this point, I actually get a little annoyed when I am handed paper.  Eventually, I will pull everyone else along.

If you are interested in how another principal has encouraged teachers to use Evernote as a tool in the Balanced Literacy program, check out this post by Tony Sinanis (@Cantiague_Lead).   I am focusing solely on administrative uses.  Hopefully you will find one that makes sense to you.

1.  Principal's Log -  I have always had trouble keeping track of my office notes.  These include my call log/notes, investigation notes, and general notes on daily events.  One of the difficulties that I always found with the old paper notebook method of keeping a call log was that I needed to remember the date or sift through pages of notes to find the notes for which I was looking.  With Evernote I keep my notes in folders by year and each note is named using the same convention "PL-Month-Day-Year."  So if I know the date, it is easy to find.  However, when I don't know the date, I can simply type the name of the student in the search box in Evernote and it will bring up all notes with that name in it.  This function is priceless.  Additionally, the notes that I keep for disciplinary investigations are easier to search and store.
2. Meeting Notes - When I go to administrative meetings I use Evernote to take and store all of my important notes.  I can tag them so that they are easier to search later.  If I don't get an electronic agenda and I don't want to add the paper one to my pile, I take a picture of the agenda and put it right in the note.  I always leave meetings with action items, so making bulleted lists in Evernote is a lifesaver.
3. PD Notes - Evernote has changed the way that I take notes at workshops and PD sessions. With my iPad, I have a true multi-media note-taking system.  I add photos from presentations in real-time.  If the presenter is moving through slides too quickly this can be a great help.  I can also use the voice recorder if it is late in the day and typing is not high on my list.
4. Idea Bank -  I use Evernote as a bank of ideas for all aspects of my professional life.  I have numerous folders as you can see in the screen shot to the right.  When I have time I go through the folders and sift through the ideas for use at a later date.  The most valuable feature in making this happen is the Web Clipper.  When ever I am online on my computer, iPad, or iPhone, I can "clip" an article, a webpage, or a link and put it in an Evernote folder.  This makes it easy to keep all notes on a particular topic, like "faculty meeting ideas," in one place.
5. Always With Me Notebook - I think one of the best features is that it syncs across all of my devices.  I have Dropbox, which does the same thing, but in Evernote, I can take the notes, whereas in Dropbox I can only store files.

I have not found a need for the paid version.  I didn't think that 60megs of uploading per month was very much; however, I haven't even come close to using it.  I am sure that would not be the case for many people.

As I said in the beginning, Evernote is nothing new and there are plenty of posts out there about how great it is, but this is mine and I hope that just as I stumbled across someone's post and found Evernote could work for me, you may find some uses that you did not see before.

I would love to hear some of your uses for Evernote.  If you have any to share, please post in the comments.



 

Related articles

• How to Use Evernote for Everything [Video]
• Review of Brand New Evernote 5 Update for iOS

The Power of Crisis

Warning: In order to truly get the full story in this post, you need to click on the links.  I have been disconnected for the past several weeks.  I have not written a blog post and I have only checked my Twitter account sparingly.  This has not been an effort to relax and disconnect as I mention in one of my posts from July.  It has been a break that was dictated by some circumstances outside my control.  As a principal, I always work on what is called the "interrupt schedule;" which basically means that while I have plans for my week, my day, my hour, the universe has different designs and interrupts those plans for more pressing things.  This summer Bear Tavern Elementary School was presented with quite an interruption.  Unfortunately, on Sunday July 29th we sustained some fairly extensive vandalism.  You can learn more about it from CBS News, ABC News, and The Hopewell Sun.

 As principal of this school for 10 years, it was shocking and saddening to walk through the building on the evening that it happened.  I truly realized how much this school has become my home.  It was like getting punched in the gut.  To see our beautiful school in such a state was painful.  Needless to say, the aforementioned interrupt schedule clearly kicked in.  Everything stopped to address the more immediate needs of the building and the community.  Hence, my absence from this blog.

Fortunately, we found out that our insurance company would cover everything, which helped me to focus on the community.  One thing that I have learned about our wonderful community is that when there is a crisis, we pull together and we emerge successful and better than before.  This is the case in this situation.  After several email communications with the community, I scheduled a community update meeting on August 6th.  This meeting was attended by over 150 staff members and community members.  Here is the presentation that I gave and subsequently posted to our district website: We are Bear Tavern: Better Together! Better Than Ever!

It was truly heartwarming to see the show of support for the school. I received numerous messages that demonstrated the character and strength of our community. Here is just a small sampling of those messages that I posted in our virtual backpack: BT Better Together: The Support of an Amazing Community. 

As mentioned in the presentation above, we were not allowed in the building until August 20th due to the toxicity of the chemicals in the fire extinguishers that were discharged.  The reopening/Community Day that was scheduled was a wonderful success and our students, staff members, families, and community members came together to ready the school for our September opening.  Here are some photos of that day.

As we are now about a week away from the start of school, we are continuing to ready the school for the arrival of the children and there is a heightened sense of community among staff members and the community.  We have worked together to navigate a difficult summer and will move into the 2012-2013 school year with a renewed focus on our community through our simple (but powerful) theme of "Better Together!"

I can only hope that every principal has the privilege of leading and participating in a community like the one at Bear Tavern Elementary School!

WE ARE BEAR TAVERN!  BETTER TOGETHER!  BETTER THAN EVER!

More Fun Than a Barrel of (Shifting) Monkeys!

As I looked through my list of blog post ideas, I came to a book that I read a couple of months ago that has great relevance to the daily practice of school-level leadership.  The book to which I am referring is Shifting the Monkey by Todd Whitaker.  I know that Peter Gabriel said that I need to "Shock the Monkey."  As a child I used to play with a Barrel of Monkeys.  My mother used to tell me to quit all the Monkey Business.  And, apparently monkeys are adept at mimicry in that they often see and then do.  However, I have never been told that I need to shift monkeys, so the title of the book was immediately intriguing.  Additionally, various members of my PLN recommended it, which is good enough for me.

As I began reading the book, I quickly understood that we were going more down a "monkey on your back" kind of road and really started to understand why these monkeys would need shifting.  I have read several of Todd Whitaker's books in the past and I enjoy his straightforward, common-sense, accessible style of writing.  The book is not long, but it has a focused message that quickly resonated with me.  The subtitle of the book is, "The art of protecting GOOD PEOPLE from LIARS, CRIERS and other SLACKERS."  We all know these types of people and as leaders we could all use some advice on helping the former while addressing the latter.

@ToddWhitaker defines monkeys as "responsibilities, obligations, and problems everyone deals with every day."  Unfortunately, there are people in every organization who are masters at moving their monkeys onto the backs of others, whether it is through their own doing or through their leader's desire to avoid headaches by simply not assigning monkeys to these draining people.  He does an excellent job of explaining many different types of monkeys and exactly how they get placed where they do.  Ultimately, the question that the book seeks to answer is, "How do I protect my good people?"  These folks are vital to the success of the organization; however, it is not realistic to move all monkeys to their backs simply because it is a certainty that they will handle things appropriately.  Not only is it unrealistic, but it is completely unfair.

As the book progresses, the focus shifts from recognizing monkeys to shifting them where they belong.  The leader's role in this is key.  With the power to direct the location of monkeys in an organization the leader must ensure that they are distributed to the correct people and not just the good people.  Whitaker spends the latter part of the book discussing types of monkeys and how to effectively shift them to their rightful owners.  He also explains how leaders can contribute to the problem by creating monkeys that are not necessary.  One common example of this is creating a rule for everyone to correct the behavior of a few.  This places a new monkey on the backs of all employees instead of just the ones to whom the rule is directed.

I think that the book is an important read and can help any leader develop a positive environment.  It has given me a great deal to think about in my own organization.  The question to answer for any workplace is: Are the monkeys appropriately placed?  If not, that might throw a Monkey Wrench into the works!

Feel free to comment if you are so inclined.

Disconnecting to Recharge?

Traditionally in order to recharge a device one must connect it to power.  I find that I am obsessed with recharging now.  My iPhone is always above 40%, my iPad is constantly charged; any device that I have is charged and ready for any important 21st century emergency.  While I realize it may sound a bit excessive, I am fine with it because I find it vital to my professional life that I remain connected.  Additionally, the benefits of being connected for personal reasons are numerous.  But, my question is this:

How does one who is reliant upon recharging using a power cord recharge the professional battery?

The Answer: Disconnect.

I have to say that when I left for Canada this past Friday evening, I was still in full-charge mode.  I had my devices with me and charged for every occasion.  As we neared the campsite, I made peace with the fact that there was no WiFi and that I did not have an international data plan.  Basically, all I was getting was the occasional expensive call or text over the next week unless I headed into town (30 min. drive) to access WiFi at McDonalds.  Honestly, this was rather unsettling to start the trip, but I knew it would become a welcome respite by about day 2.

Sure enough, I was actually enjoying my time away from the connection.  I wasn't constantly checking email, Twitter, blogs, etc, etc. etc....  I was just enjoying being out by the lake, playing board and card games with my family, reading for pleasure, and just generally relaxing.  Now I can't lie to you, during our trip into town, I did stop by Micky D's and check a couple things, but not for long and I didn't make a special trip to do it.  But, I was confronted with a problem.  On about the 5th day of our trip we found out that one of the folks in the campground with whom we are friends had WiFi!!!  I quickly got the password and started to check things, but then I remembered the whole point of the trip: Relax, Recharge, Refresh!

So, I honestly did very little with the WiFi for the last couple days of the trip.

I remembered that this trip was about catching turtles and letting them go.

I remembered that this trip was about snapping a picture of a luna moth at night.

I remembered that this trip was about sleeping in a tent with the family.

I remembered that the best way to recharge is to unplug.  Now that I am back and will be going in to my office tomorrow, I am ready to think about the future and ready the school for the new year.  I look forward to all of the challenges that the months ahead will present!  Oh, by the way, all of the devices are charged again, too.

Feel free to comment if you are so inclined. 

It's Not a Competition, It's a Reading Challenge!

As I look around at the world all I see is competition and competition is a wonderful thing!  However, everything does not need to be a competition.  I think that sometimes in elementary schools we forget that a part of what we do is teach children how to compete.  How to win, how to lose, and how to deal with all that goes with both.  This is best done on a small scale in classrooms or the gym.  It is generally not an easy lesson to teach to a whole school at once.

At our school we have a reading challenge called, "The March Reading Madness Challenge." It's a wonderful event and I look forward to it each year.  The basic premise is that the children need to read 40 pages or 40 minutes per night for one month depending upon grade level.  At the end of the month, the principal does a wacky stunt if the school meets its goal.  Nine years ago when I began doing the challenges, we used to announce the classes and students that read the most at our culminating assembly and those classes would get an ice cream party (pre-nutritional guidelines) or a pizza party.

Over the years,

• I've been duct taped to a wall three feet off the ground
• I've been pulled to the ceiling of the gym with rock climbing equipment and read to the school
• I've dyed my hair blonde and shaved my beard
• I've been dunked in a dunk tank (cold day!)
• I've been raised to the roof of the school in the fire truck bucket and spent 24 hours on the roof (29 degrees that night).
• I've kissed a pig
• I've been wrapped in a boa constrictor
• I've demonstrated a big rolling tube that would be added to our field day (hard to describe, but the children loved it). 

Then, of course, there is this year.  Well just look below to see what I did this year.

If you prefer video, you can watch it here.

This is a wonderful time of year at the school.  The children always come up to me and tell me how much they have read and that they are going to meet their goal so that I will do the stunt.  Of course, the purpose of the event is to get children to read more.  Hopefully, after the month is over a few more children catch the reading bug and keep on reading.

Over the years, we have eliminated the individual and class rewards.  This was not met with support from all.  The reasoning was because the main goal of the reading challenge was for the school to work together as one community of readers to reach a goal and cause me to keep my promise to them.  However, at our assemblies early on it was clear that the triumph of the larger challenge was lessened because the majority of the school did not get the party.  We sat down and had a great deal of conversation about the goals of the challenge and among those goals was not competition.  I think that it is important to keep the goals in mind when deciding whether competition should be an ingredient in a lesson or challenge.

That was about five years ago and our students continue to read just as much as they ever did.  Competition does have its place; however, when working with young children it is wise to decide where and when.  This may be a somewhat Pollyanna viewpoint, but as I said in the beginning, competition is everywhere and they will get a chance to compete probably more often than they want.  What are your thoughts on competition?  If you are so moved, please comment below.

Lessons Learned From a Refrigerator!

So, what can a refrigerator teach us about change in school?

New Fridge -Smudges and all

Our refrigerator died on us a couple weeks ago.  We bought a new one and had it delivered only to realize that we did not measure the height.  The width and depth, yes, but not the height!  So the delivery men took it back and told us we needed to pick out another one.  We didn't like the other ones so... we decided to remove those two useless cabinets above the fridge that store things that we don't need.  We called the delivery company and had them deliver the new refrigerator the next day.  In the meantime, I removed the cabinets... Well, I tried to remove the cabinets.  Unfortunately, they were not stand alone.  They were connected to the two adjacent cabinets.  So, I took apart the cabinets, had the refrigerator installed and then I went about building a faux cabinet looking enclosure by cutting down the original cabinet.  Once again, unfortunately, when I was screwing in a piece of wood (in the same screw hole as before, I might add) the power to the refrigerator went out.  Well, two new electrical outlets, a re-run wire, a hole in my living room wall, and two days of work later, I have electricity to my fridge again. By the way, we love it and we are glad we got it.

The faux cabinet enclosure (not finished)

Why do I tell this story?  Mainly, because I needed to vent.  However, as I was thinking about it, I realized that this story is like so many situations that we encounter when we need to change things in our school.  We have good intentions of improving something only to find that we have gotten in much deeper than we expected. Here is my take on the different ways my fridge experience correlates with my work experience.

1. While change is inevitable, sometimes it is hard to plan - We had no idea that our refrigerator was going to die on us.  We came home from work one day to a bunch of warm food!  Sometimes in our schools things happen that cause us to make changes.  It could be enrollment shifts, budgetary decisions, unfunded mandates, etc.  The point is while carefully planned change is always best, sometimes we have to change to adapt to the situation with which we are presented.
2. Mistakes are part of the process, learn from them and move on - Yes, I admit it, I forgot to measure the height, but sometimes when we are working to change something (especially with a deadline) we can miss things.  One missed measurement can scuttle the whole plan.  When we change in our schools we have so many factors to consider that it is nearly impossible to do it alone.  If I had done the measuring of the refrigerator with someone else or several someone elses, we might have caught the missed measurement.  When making change in school we need to involve all of the stakeholders in the planning process; not only so that they can have ownership of the change, but so that the project can be seen from many perspectives and the pitfalls can be avoided.
3. Sometimes our plans don't fit our situation and we have to make choices - We thought we were going to need to scrap our plans for the refrigerator that we wanted and go with something else; something less desirable to us.  However, we opted to remove the cabinets and change our situation.  When we encounter roadblocks, we have to make decisions. In schools, change is almost always met with roadblocks like resistance from various stakeholders, initial results that are not favorable, or lack of capacity to enact the change.  We can scrap the change or change the situation.  Sometimes the roadblocks are telling us that we made the wrong choice in our change; however, more often we need to reorient our organization to fit the new direction.  If stakeholders are resistant, is it because we haven't done the proper preparation? If our results are initially weak, is it because that is a natural part of the change or because we need to tweak things?  If we lack the capacity to make the change, do we need to provide professional development to be ready?
4. Change is not easy, sometimes it will cause us to doubt the new direction - The removal of our useless cabinets proved to be much more difficult than initially expected.  As I tried to remove them and realized that their removal would cause a larger reaction with the adjoining cabinets, I had to reevaluate the change.  I almost called the delivery company and told them to hold on the delivery again.  How often has a new program or initiative been introduced into our district and because it became very difficult to actualize it simply faded away?  Usually this pattern leads to the mindset, "If I wait long enough this too shall pass!"  But, with dedication, creativity, and hard work we can persevere and foster the change successfully.
5. Get others involved in the implementation. Don't try to do it all yourself - In the initial paragraph of this post, it seems as though I have done all of this alone; however, at the point where the cabinets did not come out so easily, I involved my father-in-law.  He is a bit more experienced in this type of job.  We made the decision to take the cabinets apart and then cut them down to create an enclosure.  One of the curses of being an administrator is that we often have a vision of how we want something to happen and have difficulty letting that go to others to be molded and changed.  The problem is that the ideas of others usually enhance and make our ideas better.  They are different than our original idea; however, the value of collaboration is immeasurable.  There is usually someone with more experience or a different point of view to stretch the original plan into something amazing.
6. It is likely that change will cause some major issues that require a great deal of work. - Seriously, this rebuilding of the cabinet took a total of 45 minutes.  We were very happy with ourselves!  Unfortunately, the last screw (literally, the last one) apparently pierced a wire in the wall (where there should not have ever been a wire) and cut the power to the fridge...and the microwave...and several other outlets.  Ahhhhh!!!. We spent two days mapping the circuit, isolating where the damaged wire fed, and cutting off the dead wire.  We replaced it with a new wire between two new electrical outlets to complete the connection. By the way the outlets on this circuit were crazy.  They spanned two rooms and outlets on opposite sides of the rooms.  In our schools we often have unanticipated problems.  These are different than the roadblocks because these are the "normal" problems that will occur with any change.  For instance, sometimes it is difficult to anticipate that developing and implementing a new program may disenfranchise a group of teachers.  A good example of this would be switching from a basal reading approach to a balanced literacy approach.  Teachers who have been teaching with basal readers for decades may feel that their efforts were good for years, but now switching to a new approach indicates that they have been doing it wrong.  These types of issues are real and need to be addressed. 
7. Change for the better is worth it! -  At the end of the refrigerator story, I mentioned that we are happy with the new fridge.  This is indicative of coming through any change process.  Once your initial vision has been reworked and your reality has been remodeled, it is usually very satisfying to see the fruits of the change!
8. A final note on change. - As you can see from the picture below, the wall in my living room took a beating to make this project work.  Change is messy.  No matter how well planned, there will be some things that do not go smoothly; however, just as Spackle can be a homeowner's best friend, organizational skills, interpersonal skills, and leadership skills are the change agent's best friends.

Living room wall - The fridge is on the other side of this wall

This may have been a stretch and it is by no means scientific; however, I believe that we can find lessons in everything that we do.  I hope that my refrigerator can provide some insight into school change.  I know that there are many books out there on change and much research on the subject, but I also know that I have a new fridge and it came with a story that I could share. While I know this is not a comprehensive treatment of change in schools, it's a start.

By the way, stainless steel is a nice idea, but I kind of like my children's fingerprints on fridge.  It lets me know that we live in our home.  Don't be afraid of the "mess" in your school.  It is the evidence that your students, staff, and community are living with those changes.  You can tidy up the mess and know that tomorrow it will be back, just like the fingerprints.  I think that is good.