LeaderTalk

Tragedy Hits Home at NIU

There were four school-related shooting in the U.S. during the past week.  Four in one week.  They took place in Baton Rouge, LA on Friday, February 8, Memphis, TN on Monday, Oxnard, CA on Tuesday, and DeKalb, IL on Thursday. 

All of these situations are tragic and senseless.  As a principal, I am responsible for the safety of 530 children and 55 adults, and this is one of my biggest nightmares.  I can't even imagine what would bring a person to the point in his life where the only way to escape his demons would be to start shooting in a school filled with innocent children. As horrific as all of these incidents are, the one that hit me like a runaway train locomotive is the Valentines Day murders at Northern Illinois University.  Six dead, at least 16 injured - all innocent young people just beginning their adventure into the adult world.

I am an alumnus of NIU, having attended college there from 1981-1985.  I earned my elementary education degree from Northern, and it has served me well.  Some of my life's most wonderful memories are of my days in DeKalb, and I am still close with many of my college buddies, one of whom introduced me to my wife, Sally.

I am truly haunted by this nightmare come true, and I can't stop thinking about it.  There are so many school shootings each year, but they always seem so far away from my little corner of the world.  Yet, on Thursday, my precious memories of days playing Frisbee outside the NIU Student Center, or riding my bike from building to building, or sitting in large lecture halls just like the one in Cole Hall, collided with the cold, harsh reality that we are never really safe; that there are people out there with guns who have no regard for human life. 

And why was it so easy for this murderer to get the guns?  He purchased all of them in Champaign, Illinois from a gun dealer with a gun shop behind his house.  He purchased extra ammunition and a holster from the same internet site that sold weapons to the Virginia Tech gunman.  Will we ever learn?  What does the NRA have to say now?  All of this leads to another question for me.  That is, do we really still have the right (or the need) to "bear arms" in this country?  I am having a very difficult time rationalizing that part of our beloved Constitution (see Amendment II of the Bill of Rights).

So now what?  As I sit at my computer taking advantage of one of the basic freedoms guaranteed to me as an American citizen, I wonder if Steven Kazmierczak felt the same freedom to exercise his rights as a citizen. How do I come to grips with this? 

My heart and soul go out to all of the victims of this senseless, terrible tragedy. 

 

Good Teaching Trumps Everything

[Cross-posted at The Principal and Interest]

For my post this month, I am going to piggyback on Chris's post from yesterday...

Just over a week ago I was in Philadelphia for the inaugural Educon 2.0 conference.  This conference, organized and hosted by Chris Lehmann, was one of the most invigorating and thought-provoking conferences I have ever attended.  I could not wait to get back to school on Monday and start sharing all of the fabulous things I learned.  I sat with my superintendent for over an hour and just raved about the concepts I learned and the people I met. 

To start, the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) is an incredible high school.  If I am ever presented with the privilege of starting a new school from the ground up, I would model it based on the way the SLA was created.  Forget the fact that this is a high school, and my interests lie at the elementary level.  Good teaching is a constant, regardless of the level or age of the students, and deep learning can and should take place at all grade levels, and beyond the walls of the school. 

The bottom line for me is that high quality education is about good teaching more than anything else. Good teaching in the 21st century is not about technology. High quality teaching is not just about blogging, creating wikis, or podcasting. Yes, those are a few of the tools or options available to teachers, but there are so many more. Real teaching is about creating opportunities for students to become involved in critical thinking, questioning, problem solving, inquiring, researching, and authentic learning.  It involves teachers setting up situations where students become self-directed in their learning; where students feel safe to take risks, and possibly fail, before some new knowledge becomes ingrained. Excellent teachers recognize that different students learn differently, and that one size does not fit all.

Good teachers teach many options for students and then let them make choices. The best teachers I have known are the ones who create lessons which tap into students' interests and incorporate some level of choice. These are the teachers who make a real difference in students' lives.  These are the teachers whose students take learning to another level.  Their students expand their learning outside of the classroom because they are motivated by the hunger for knowledge, and they are fed by their teachers.

When I observed the classrooms at SLA, I saw engaging teachers who incorporated numerous strategies into their lessons.  There was hands-on science at a very deep, scientific level.  I witnessed a provocative debate about characters in a novel.  And the current events discussions that I watched rivaled anything I have seen on CNN.  The SLA students I observed and spoke with truly were engaged learners.

Finally, good teachers are those people who connect numerous subjects in meaningful ways; not taught separately as if in a vacuum.  The idea of interdisciplinary teaching is not a new one, but it is often difficult to accomplish due to scheduling constraints and lack of planning time with colleagues.  The best of the best are able to overcome the typical challenges of the school day to create lessons that have real meaning for students.

Sure, SLA is a 1:1 laptop school, and every student receives a MacBook. However, what really got me excited after Educon was not the technology.  It was observing good teaching and talking to good teachers.

At a Crossroads

I have a new year's dilemma. In 2007, one of my goals was to learn all about the Read/Write web, and I devoted much of my own staff development time and energy learning about such tools as blogging, podcasting, using wikis, posting videos on YouTube and TeacherTube, creating digital stories with VoiceThread, and meeting others on social network sites like Twitter.  I was determined to write a new blog post at least once per week, and I discovered the need to create a second blog designed specifically for the parents at my school.  Another goal was to model these tools for teachers. My staff is very aware of my blogs, I include the topic of educational technology at every faculty meeting, and I am constantly reminding teachers about ways to incorporate the Web 2.0 into their teaching.  I am pleased that I have ended 2007 having met my goals.  Yet there is something nagging at me.

Although I have made it clear that I expect teachers to start blogging, I am seeing too many of them using their blogs to post daily homework assignments or to provide interesting website links for parents.  They are blogging in a Web 2.0 world, but they are still thinking in a Web 1.0 frame of mind.  A teacher does not need a blog to post homework assignments.  A static classroom website will do the trick quite nicely. 

All the cool tools out there, all of the powerful ways for students to publish on the Internet, all of the possibilities for connecting with people all over the world are great, yet, I still have not been convinced that any of these really translate into improved student achievement.  Ultimately, isn't that what we educators are all about?  Our responsibility is to ensure that our students are learning to read, write, compute, calculate, problem-solve, think critically, and become self-directed.  That is what we are paid to do.  That is what our respective communities expect.  That is what we are held accountable for (more now than ever due to NCLB).

I do believe that our students need to understand the uses of technology in preparation for success in tomorrow's world of work.  But is this belief based on a good hunch or on solid empirical data proving that students can achieve and learn in a Web 2.0 classroom?  How do the educators who are invested in new technologies convince the majority of parents, teachers, and politicians that these are the real tools students need to succeed in life?  For example, Will Richardson wrote an interesting post a while ago about a teenager who is able to send text messages with his cell phone in his pocket.  He does this while sitting in class without the teachers knowing.  If he took out the phone in class he might be accused of cheating.  Will's point is that there are technologies out there that can help students access information and learn, yet the use of them would be considered cheating. 

There are too many schools and districts that are too restrictive.  They prohibit the use of Wikipedia for research, they block sites like YouTube and MySpace, they disallow the use of iPods, and they require cell phones to be turned off and put away during the school day.  These restrictive policies need to be loosened.

What must take place in our schools and our classrooms is a total shift in thinking.  Teachers must allow and then encourage students to use new technologies and resources to solve real-life problems.  Teachers need to break free from the restraints of requiring students to memorize and recite inane facts (like memorizing the states and their capitals - a pet peeve of mine). Instead, have the students communicate with others living in different parts of the country or the world through blogging, podcasting, and Skype. Teach students how to use Google Maps as a reference tool.  Allow students to create social networks with other students so they can work together to investigate and solve problems.  Allow them to use their cell phones to receive and share information.  Require them to learn about the issues other people are struggling with by communicating directly with those people instead of reading second hand news.  Teach about RSS feeds and require its use in the classroom and for homework. 

So now I am at a crossroads.  I have spent the last year learning, and now I am ready to put ideas to practice.  However, as a principal, I do not have a class of students I can call my own.  I still must depend on teachers to do the real work.  My challenge for 2008 is find a way to incorporate new educational tools into all classrooms in my school and to prove that there is a direct positive impact on student achievement. Isn't this one of the challenges for all school leaders?

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

I received my first holiday gift this morning - NO SCHOOL due to snowy weather in Chicago!  Since we are now fully embedded in the holiday season, I decided to write about a favorite  gift I have given to friends and colleagues over the years.  The idea for this gift came from a story about my older daughter. 

The other day when I took my 13 year-old daughter, Marni, to the public library so she could do some research for her science fair project, I had a flashback to the time my wife and I took her to the library many years ago. I remember that being a “momentous” occasion for Marni. She had just turned five years old, and it was the first time she was checking out books with her very own library card. We had a fine time watching her pour over the shelves, looking for the most colorful and interesting books to bring home.

However, as we neared the circulation desk, we watched in amazement as Marni dropped her new books and ran over to the shelves of videos. At that moment, checking out movies became all-important to her. Without any thought she grabbed two videos and proclaimed that these were what she wanted to check out with her new library card. Marni was more excited to take videos home than she was to bring home the books she had so carefully chosen earlier.

My wife and I were horrified! After leaving the library (with the books, not the movies!) I reflected on the incident, and found myself quite disappointed. As lovers of books ourselves, we had thought that we were instilling the same love of books in our children. And, although I know my kids do enjoy their books, that moment also reinforced for me how powerfully seductive television and videos were for them. Furthermore, a few days later, I watched my kids watching television. They were staring blankly at the screen; they were not interacting, creating, or imagining. Two thoughts that came to mind were, first, my children were watching too much television, and second, maybe we had not introduced them to the very best in children’s literature.

That was the point when I remembered a book I had read as an undergraduate education student. The book is called The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. In this book, which is an outstanding reference for parents and teachers, Trelease writes about the importance of reading aloud to children starting the day they are born and continuing through their high school years. As was reported back in 1985 by the United States Commission on Reading in its groundbreaking report, Becoming a Nation of Readers, “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” The commission found conclusive evidence to support reading aloud not only in the home but also in the classroom: “It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades.”

In his book, Mr. Trelease further explains the importance of reading aloud to children of all ages, he outlines the stages of reading aloud, what makes a good read aloud book, and the importance of sustained silent reading. Trelease also provides a “Treasury of Read-alouds” with descriptions of hundreds of excellent “kid-tested” wordless books, picture books, novels, and poetry books. I believe this is a book every family should have in its home and every teacher should have on her shelf. The treasury alone is an incredible resource to help parents and educators choose appropriate, engaging books to read aloud to children, and it helps children choose great books to read silently.

 The Read-Aloud Handbook is now in its sixth edition, and it is available at all of the large bookstores and online. This book makes a wonderful gift for parents, friends, teachers, and others who love to read to children.  It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

Happy Holidays to all of our LeaderTalk Readers!

Change is Constant

Q:  How many teachers does it take to change a light bulb?

A:  None.  Teachers can't handle change!

    Okay, so I am being a little sarcastic.  Yet, how many battles have we fought with staff regarding changes that needed to be made in the areas of school policies, procedures, curriculum, instruction, student and staff safety issues, and other important topics?  The need to change seems to be a constant in the field of education.  In my 21 years as an educator, I have witnessed many changes in schools.  Some changes have become permanent, like the rights and protections put in place for students with disabilities.  Federal legislation (IDEA) has mandated such changes.  Other changes have burst on to the scene, and then faded away like smoke from a hot camp fire.  Remember the open classroom model in the 1970s?  Classroom walls were knocked down, and students were given freedom to investigate, learn, and work at their own individual pace.  This may have worked for some students, but for many of us (yours truly included)  it was an invitation to sit and do nothing.  A few years later the walls were rebuilt after educators realized that giant spaces with 120 fourth graders marching to their own drummers may not have been the best method to educate young learners.
     I have been reading the book School Leadership that Works by Marzano, Waters, and McNulty.  This is an interesting book that "blends practical advice and research."   This is classic Robert Marzano, using his meta-analysis of research skills and providing readers with practical guidance for facing the daily challenges of school leadership.  In reading and discussing this book with my administrative colleagues, I was quite intrigued by chapter 5, "Two Types of Change."
     The authors explain that there are two types of change:  They are First-Order Change and Second-Order Change.  "First-order change is incremental.  It can be thought of as the next most obvious step to take in a school district."  Through my experiences as a principal, I have noticed that this is the type of change most people are comfortable with and it is what they prefer.  First-order change takes time and patience.  An example of first-order change from my district is the use of blogs for instructional purposes.  The topic was first introduced to teachers in the spring of 2005.  Teachers were given the opportunity to set up free blogs, and they were given training on how to use the blogs.  A few teachers took off running with this.  Some others waited and watched to see what would happen.  They now have finally started to use a blog with students and parents.  A large group of teachers, however, shrugged their shoulders and went about their normal routines of teaching just like they always had.  Nothing changed for them.  As the principal, I have done my best to model, cajole, and encourage the incorporation of blogging into their teaching, but to no avail.  I think eventually, pressure from students, parents, and peers will push everyone into some form of blogging.  Change will then be complete.  I must reiterate that first-order change takes time and patience.
    Second-order change, on the contrary, is very different from first-order change.  According to Marzano and his colleagues, "it involves dramatic departures from the expected, both in defining a given problem and in finding a solution."  Second-order change calls for decisive, swift action.  We observed second-order change on September 12, 2001, the day after a life-altering event.  In the school setting, a heightened level of safety for students and staff required administrators to take a much tougher stand on school security.  There was not much debate.  Lock all doors, require all visitors, including parents, to sign in at the school office and wear a visitor's badge, and develop lock-down procedures which are practiced with all students and staff.  This is second-order change. 
    Second-order change requires innovative thinking, knowledge about research and theories, willingness to challenge the status quo, continuous monitoring of the situation, and operating in a consistent manner. I experienced  this type of  change  at the start of this school year when our district administrators (myself included) decided to implement a new reading assessment program.  The program we chose was research-based and founded in educational best-practice, and it would provide teachers with valuable data, which was something lacking in our district.  We made it clear that we were jumping right in. Teachers were not given any options, and they were not given a year or two to get used to the idea. Teachers received inservice training in the beginning of September, and by October 1, they were required to start assessing students one-on-one.  The teachers discovered that this type of assessment was difficult to accomplish, and they were frustrated.  We did not waiver, however.  Instead, we provided more training and more assistance for teachers.  Once all the students were assessed, the teachers finally realized that they had some very powerful data about each individual student at their fingertips.  Then, we made it clear that we expected this reading data to be used for guided reading lessons 60 minutes a day, five days a week.  This is second-order change impacting instruction, assessment, and hopefully, student learning.
     As school leaders, we all have been, or we will be faced with the responsibility to implement change.  I am interested in examples of first-order and second-order changes that have been successful.  What was the reason behind the success? Assuming that change breeds anxiety in people, how did you deal with those who fought against making changes?  Finally, are there areas that should never be changed in schools?

It was an "Accident."

  “Oops. My bad.”   When I first heard that popular and often-used phrase, I was annoyed by it. What do you mean “your bad?” What happened to proper English and the rules of etiquette? When a person makes a mistake, shouldn’t he say “I am sorry, I made a mistake.”? Or, in the least, shouldn’t he make some type of apology. “My bad” seemed so flippant, like saying “yeah, so I messed up …what’s the big deal?”  Yet I hear it all the time. My own kids use it constantly whenever they do something carelessly or without thinking,  For a long time that silly phrase just bugged me.
     I have had a change of heart recently however, regarding the “my bad” comment. This change in my attitude stems from a long-running argument in my family regarding a certain other phrase that people often use (Actually, I would argue that they overuse it). That phrase is “It was an accident.”
    I have been arguing with my wife and daughters about this other phrase for at least five years, and I am not sure I have made any headway in changing their minds (even though they are so obviously wrong!). Here is my side of the argument. I promise I will connect this to the “my bad” comment in a moment.
     My argument goes like this: It started back when I was in high school while I was taking driver’s education. I remember merging on to the expressway for the very first time. I was pretty scared, white knuckles and all. Anyway, the unlucky teacher sitting next to me started talking about accidents. He made a very simple statement. He said, “When driving, there are no accidents. Someone is always at fault.” Of course, this statement was made in the context of driving a car, and he was referring to automobile accidents. Regardless of the context, the phrase has always stuck with me.
     Fast forward about 25 years. I was completing my third or fourth year as an elementary school principal. I had come to the realization that 9 out of 10 times when a student was sent to me for some disciplinary reason, his or her immediate first line of defense was “It was an accident.” No Billy, hitting Tommy in the mouth was not an accident. You were angry because he took your ball so you slugged him. Or, Sheila did not accidentally trip over your leg, your teacher saw you stick it out on purpose to see what would happen.
     These incidents are not accidents. Someone is at fault. When a person states, “It was an accident” it sends the message that they do not want to take responsibility for their actions. Somehow, that little fellow sitting in my office wants me to believe that hitting Tommy in the mouth was an accident, even though it was an act of violence perpetrated as a result of getting angry at Tommy.
I just don’t buy it.
     I hear this from my own two kids as well. One of them will say, “I did not mean for the lamp to break. It was an accident.” No, you were throwing a pillow at your sister, and the pillow knocked over the lamp. That was not an accident. That was a careless act that happened because you were not thinking of the consequences of throwing a pillow at someone in the living room.
    So, how do we help children understand that they must take responsibility for their actions and not say that their mistake was due to some random act that was completely out of their control (e.g. an “accident”)? How do we teach children to think before they act? How do we impress upon them that there are both negative and positive consequences to the choices they make?
     First, I no longer allow a child to use the “A” word in my office. If a student starts to explain that her behavior was due to an accident, I immediately stop her and tell her to explain to me exactly what she did wrong. Then we trace her steps back to the point where she made a bad choice, and we replay the situation, this time making the right choice. Of course, in life there are no “do-overs;” we can’t hit the rewind button and try again. At the elementary school level, my job is to teach children to recognize when they reach the “fork in the road” and then choose the right path or make the correct choice. If Billy recognizes, in the heat of the moment, that Tommy grabbed his ball just to antagonize him, Billy may make a better choice and not smash Tommy in the mouth. This better choice will keep Tommy from getting hurt, and it will keep Billy out of trouble and out of my office.
     Back to “My bad.” I now see that silly little phrase in a whole new light. This is not a cop out after all. A person who uses that statement is admitting that he made a mistake. He is taking some responsibility for his actions - much more so than someone claiming that his behavior was due to an accident. Admitting you did something wrong is the first step toward fixing the problem.  Helping children understand that they must consider the consequences of their actions and take responsibility for their behavior is our job as educators and parents.  It is a lesson that will serve them well in life.

 

Try a Scavenger Hunt in Your School

I started out writing this as a comment, but it grew into this post. During our "back to school" faculty meeting in August, I created an activity for the staff that was a lot of fun and was similar to the one described in the last post by Stephanie Sandifer.  I developed a school scavenger hunt that incorporated critical thinking, and it provided the staff with the chance to explore areas of the building that they normally do not see.

I started planning for this a week earlier by walking around the building with a pad of paper.  I was looking for certain landmarks in the school such as the kiln in the art room, the mini-toilet in the kindergarten room, the Ellison die cut machine in the teachers' lounge, the solar system rug in the library, and the mural on the story room wall.  For each one, I wrote a clue for the teachers to use when they were on the scavenger hunt.  I tried to make the clues difficult so they would have to do a little critical thinking, and so there could be more than one correct answer.  For example, one of the clues was "Find the hottest thing in the school" (the kiln).

Next, in preparation for the activity, I created teams by mixing everyone up so they had to work with staff members they did not normally work with.  When it was time for the "game," I gave each team a digital camera and a sheet with the clues (there were 11 clues). Each clue was worth one point, and I told them that they had exactly 30 minutes to find each item and take a picture of it with most of the team members in the picture to prove that they found it.  They would lose points if they were late returning to the library (our meeting room).

As soon as I said "Go" they took off like a shot, searching for the items.  30 minutes later, all the teams had returned, tired, but laughing and playfully taunting the other teams.  I took one team's camera at a time, and I connected it to the computer/LCD projector.  We went through each of the pictures, and the team members had to provide a reason why each picture fit with the corresponding clue.  I was the judge, and I determined the points.  There was a lot of good spirited arguing and debating as to whether certain pictures deserved a point or not, and I was strict with the scoring, because they had to follow the directions precisely (just like they ask their students to do). 

For example, there were a number of different pictures to represent the hottest thing in the school such as the new Harry Potter book (hot as in "popular" with the students), the second floor classrooms (no AC in our school), and our technology teacher (a good looking young man!). If they gave a valid explanation, they received a point.  If they gave a good reason but did not have any people in the picture - no point! Following directions is important!

There were seven teams, and it took us about 45 minutes to view all of the teams' pictures.  There was a lot of terrific debate, discussion, and good natured arguing.  Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, they discovered new areas of the school, they worked with some new people, and they saw first-hand the engaging power of critical thinking.

Here are the 11 clues I gave:
1.  Name your group and take a picture that somehow represents your group name.
2.  Relax on a "new" piece of furniture.
3.  Prove that “You can’t say you can’t play.” (an important phrase in our school)
4.  Take a picture of the group standing among the planets of our solar system.
5.  Make a “Minor” adjustment to something expensive.
6.  Find the hottest thing in the school.
7.  Go home, face east, and wave to the camera.
8.  There are 25 of these, and they are golden.
9.  Take a picture of an astronaut, a dinosaur, and a spider web together.  Extra credit if the astronaut and      dinosaur are IN the spider web.
10. Find a feline chasing a famous, flying fortune-maker.
11. Take a picture of a teammate sitting on a mini throne.

Some of these are school-specific, but I think you get the idea.  This was a popular activity, and one that teachers can do with their students.  They also could extend this by using the digital pictures to create a digital story on VoiceThread or PhotoStory3.

Parent Communication: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

One week before school started I spent some time talking to our district’s new teachers. The topic was “parent communication.” In my opinion, this is a very important area for new and experienced teachers to focus on. Establishing positive relationships with parents is crucial for a successful school year. The parent-teacher relationship is something that must be cultivated from day one, and the teacher must initiate it. When children see that teachers and parents are working together in a partnership, they receive the very powerful message that the adults in their world believe that education is of utmost importance.

I spoke to the new teachers about leading parent conferences, making phone calls to share concerns and to celebrate successes, writing appropriate report card comments, and using newsletters, websites, blogs, Wikis, and email to communicate with parents. I explained that there are three overarching issues regarding parent communication - one is good, one is bad, and one is just plain ugly!

First - The Good.  Parents are pleased when they hear messages that suggest that their child is working hard, is learning at his or her appropriate pace, is a respectful citizen, and has friends.  When teachers frequently communicate positives like these and when the  communication is unsolicited, this is good.  When teachers overtly ask parents for their opinions regarding classroom activities and their children's school experiences through surveys, phone calls, and notes, this is good.  When Teachers are good listeners when parents speak, and when they pay close attention to the parents’ issues or concerns, this is good. When teachers show respect for parents' opinions, even if there is disagreement, and when teachers show warmth and caring for each individual child, this is good.

Now - The Bad. Parents are concerned when their children are not invested in their school work, are not producing work that is equivalent to their ability, and are not behaving appropriately.  Obviously, complete failure to communicate is bad, but I want to take this a step further. Parents do not like surprises!  When teachers wait too long to share a concern, this is bad.  Teachers should never use the report card as the first means to share something negative.  When teachers become defensive with parents who are questioning their methods, this is bad. When teachers attempt to communicate with parents, but they are unprepared with the facts or the data to support their position, this is bad.  When teachers do not return calls or they do reply to a parent's question or a concern, this is bad.  When teachers make promises to parents and then don't follow through, this is bad.

Finally - The Ugly.  I will sum this up in one word: "email."  I believe that email might be the worst form of true communication between parents and teachers.  If you are reading this and thinking, "But Dave, you are one of the principals espousing the virtues of using the internet or the Web 2.0 in schools" I would understand your confusion.  However, I am not writing about the use of email for disseminating basic, every-day facts, such as "Parents, don't forget to send a sack lunch for tomorrow's field trip," or "Parents, we are running out of Kleenex in our classrooms, and the noses are running wild.  Please send a another box to school with your child."  I am talking about the dangers of using email to "discuss" important issues with individuals or groups of parents.

Email is way too easy to use and abuse. Email makes it very easy for someone to vent their anger in a moment's notice. How often have you been angered by something, and you have whipped off an email in two short minutes?  Email eliminates the importance of "think time" as too many emails are fired off in a moment of anger or emotion, usually at night when the teacher is long gone from school.  There is something to be said for waiting until the next day and thinking about all aspects of an issue before initiating communication.  Yet, with email, parents believe they have instant access to teachers.  Then, parents become angry when the teacher does not reply immediately (maybe because they are teaching all day?).

Conversely, I have seen too many educators (myself included) reply to an issue by sending an email reply back to a parent.  The danger in doing this is that people can't hear tone of voice in an email.  They can easily misinterpret a comment, which can't be immediately cleared up.  What ends up happening is the parent and teacher become involved in an email war instead of communicating with each other.  I firmly believe that when educators receive a controversial, angry, or emotional email from a parent, they should reply with a phone call, and not with an email.

When all is said and done at the end of the school year, teachers should leave for the summer with many wonderful memories of their students and a sense of pride in their students' accomplishments.  Hopefully these memories will include the positive relationships they established with their students and their students' parents.  Now is the time for teachers to start building these positive relationships.

Our job as administrators is to work with our teachers to assist them in developing good communication with parents, and our responsibility is to help teachers understand the bad and ugly consequences of poor parent communication. 

To Blog or to "Newsletter?" - That is the Question

I have been struggling with this question for the past year. Throughout my 12 years as an elementary school principal, I have written a monthly newsletter which has been sent home to parents.  I include news about upcoming events, pictures and highlights of assemblies, important information regarding school policies and procedures, and other bits of information, much of which fits nicely in the "FYI" file.  At first, the newsletter was copied 400 times and sent home via the "backpack express."  More recently, we have stopped the paper newsletter, and we now post it electronically on the school's website.  This has been a big change for parents because logging on to a computer, accessing the internet, opening email, and clicking on a link to the newsletter certainly takes more time than opening a child's backpack and reading the newsletter on paper.  Plus, the paper version is more portable.  We have had to do a lot of reminding and "retraining" to get parents to access the newsletter online.

A few weeks ago I heard Dr. Tim Tyson, the principal of Mabry Middle School (just recently retired), talk about the power of blogging.  Dr. Tyson believes that blogs should be a major part of the daily school and homework experiences.  All class assignments can be there, including worksheets, explanations, samples/models, etc.  During his last few years as principal, he required that all of his teachers have blogs and to post at least once a week.  The Mabry staff eliminated their more traditional website in favor of a collection of blogs as the main communication tool (mabryonline.org).

My dilemma, as a blogging principal, is that I believe I can use my blog to communicate the same information as on the newsletter, and often, I am repeating myself in both places.  Is this really necessary?  Can I stop writing for the school newsletter and only use my blog?  Will the important information parents need get lost in the blogosphere, thus creating miscommunication issues?  The easy answer to these questions is "yes."  I could simply tell parents that starting in September, they must refer to my blog for the typical information I had been including on the newsletter.  If school administrators agree with Dr. Tyson, as I do, then we must be the role models for our teachers.  We must forge ahead and take advantage of the possibilities that blogging provides.

Will that work?  Maybe, but I am afraid that it will not be so simple.  As much as we think blogging is part of the mainstream world, I do not believe we are there yet.  The switch from a paper newsletter to an electronic version took time, and transitioning to a blog will take time as well. There will be some confusion, there will be some resentment, and there will be some people who feel left out because they will not want to add more "steps" into their already busy days. 

Yet, there are so many positive reasons to make this switch.  One great reason to use the blog instead of a newsletter is the Web 2.0 component of blogging.  The blog is interactive; the newsletter is not.  When a parent reads something in the newsletter and has a question or a comment, I will receive a call or an email, and I will respond to the individual. However, if others have the same question, I find myself answering it many more times.  If the same question were asked in the blog, for all to see, I could provide the same answer one time via the blog's comments feature.  This is more efficient and would save all of us time.

Also, the blog provides me with a vehicle for sharing more pictures (with Flickr, for example) and it provides me with the ability to include video (via TeacherTube or YouTube).  I have learned from experience that this is what parents like to see, but the traditional newsletter is very restricting in this way.  The blog can open up a whole new world for parents.  The amount and types of information I can share is much greater.

So what is the problem?  Why not use the blog as my main form of communication?  The problem is that I have been trying to get parents to go to the blog site for a year, and only a handful do.  I am afraid that the important information I need to get out to parents will not reach them if I stop writing for our newsletter and concentrate only on the blog.

Dean Shareski wrote an interesting post on his blog last week titled "If You ain't a Feed, I don't Read." His point was that he only has time to read blog posts that he receives in his RSS aggregator, and that there are a lot of people he would read more frequently, like Marco Torres or Marc Prensky, if they had blogs. He writes, "If you don’t blog but have some significant ideas, learning, teaching to share, I likely may not know about your or even follow your work."  Dean also wrote that he is still in the minority of people who receive their information via RSS feeds. 

Chances are that the people reading this post are proponents of using RSS feeds to gain information, so there is no need for me to write why RSS is so important.  But, how do we convince the rest of the world (and more specifically the parents of our students) that RSS is the "New Killer App?"  Can I "force" the parents of my students to read my blog for news and information about our school by ending my long-term relationship with our school newsletter?  This is a change I really want to implement, but I am concerned that doing so will alienate and/or anger parents, thus defeating the purpose of effective school-home communication.

If there are principals who use the blog instead of the newsletter, I would love to know how it is working, and what they did to help people make the transition.

Shrinking the Gender Gap in School Administration

I am not a sexist.  I am not a chauvinist.  I am not a racist, an elitist, a fascist, or an ageist (I also am not a columnist, a pharmacist, a flutist, or any other kind of "ist.").  However, when I first saw the blog post titled "The Gender Shift" on the NAESP blog, I immediately thought "Here we go again.  Another study comparing men and women in education." 

This NAESP blog, called the Principal's Office, links the reader to a study completed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  This study was titled "Characteristics of School Principals."  This study looked at many different characteristics of school principals, but the one I was most interested in was the increase in female principals in public elementary schools over the last 10 years. According to the study,

Between 1993–94 and 2003–04, the percentage of public school principals who were female increased from 41 to 56 percent in elementary schools and from 14 to 26 percent in secondary schools.

Hey, I have no problem with more women becoming principals (some of my best friends are women principals!).  Actually, I believe that it's about time!  Think about the composition of most, if not all of the elementary school teaching staffs.  They are mostly women.  In my school, we have three male teachers (about 8% of the teaching staff). I would venture to guess that most elementary schools have a similar ratio of women to men teachers.  Yet, only 56% of the elementary school principals are women. 

The historical lack of women in the principal's office does not surprise me.  Women have had to break the gender ceiling in just about every aspect of life including business, politics, academia, and sports. Have you ever read the famous Rules for Women Teachers: 1915? The first rule is "You will not marry during the term of the contract."   We have come a long way since 1915, but we still have a way to go. 

For those female teachers with families, being a full time mom and a full time teacher can become quite a juggling act. I would imagine that principal moms have an even harder time juggling all of the responsibilities of parenting and principaling. Again, this is not a sexist observation.  I merely am reflecting on what I perceive as a continuation of our society's double standard.  Women who work are expected to hold down two jobs (both mom and employee) while men have always been perceived as the wage earner or the financial supporter of the family.  How many stay-at-home dads do you know?

As gender roles in society become blurred, I am happy to see more women moving into the elementary school principalship.  I hope the trend continues, and I hope it spreads into secondary education and higher education as well.