Have a Good Life

Today, Damon Hargraves, host of the WorkflowED podcast turned the mic on me and interviewed me for the 100th episode of the Transformative Principal Podcast. I can’t believe I have done 100 episodes of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this and helping me make it better.

• RTI idea was in place, but we needed a little kick in the pants.
• Value of getting away from the day-to-day issues at school.
• How to keep it going when you come back from conferences: hang up the poster.
• Reducing ELA from 90 minutes per day to 45 minutes per day, with students who need 90 minutes still getting that much time.
• How to get teachers to agree to reduce the number of minutes for their content area.
• Yolanda Westerberg
• We can always be better, so let’s always improve.
• There is a story written before you. Accept the story that has been there before your chapter 1 starts.
• How to have solid forward momentum as you make changes, and not get stalled.
• Meeting with the correct people so you don’t get stalled.
• Getting feedback and adjusting course.
• Schedules Explained for Teachers video
  Schedules Explained for Parents video
• Making sure that the right people had the information at the right time.
• The schedule we creating had a place for every student in the school.
• How to design software for your school when you don’t have what you need.
• Having plans in place even if it is going to be very difficult.
• Guru Technologies - the company we hired to develop the app for us.
• The app you can actually use yourself: Pickr App
• Teacher choice tutorial - kids know they aren’t performing and are eager to have the extra help.
• Be simple about what you’re trying to implement.
• MVP - minimum viable product
• Goals for moving forward: anticipate needs earlier.
• The book by Austin Buffum and Mike Mattos: It’s About Time

 

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Overview:  Woodson has been an all-day everyday Kindergarten Center for the past 11 years.  In the past 4 years enrollment has fluctuated between 360–425 students (currently about 385 with our preschool class).  51% of our students are students of color, and we have a 61% free and reduced lunch student population.  We have 16 sections of kindergarten this year–13 on the traditional school calendar and 3 on the modified (year long) calendar as they feed into the modified calendar elementary school.  We have been a PBIS school for the past 5 years and this year we were award a “School of Excellence” award by the State Department for our work in established strong tier one behavioral supports for all students.  This year we have implemented a behavior specialist position as well as being the second year in our bi-linguage reading pilot in which we have a spanish speaking paraprofessional front loading reading instruction in home languages of a sub section of our EL students.  Last year we tried a new venue for Parent Education via videos of local “celebrities” and teachers role playing activities that parents could do with their children to prepare for K.

Bio:  This is my 4th year as Principal of the Woodson Kindergarten Center.  Prior to this position I was an Assistant Principal, Supervisor of Special Education (all in Austin MN) and Special Education Teacher in Saint Paul MN.  Besides being the Principal at Woodson I am a facilitator for the Minnesota Principal Academy out of the University of Minnesota in units surrounding literacy, ethical leadership and RtI.   This year I am also a presenter for the Minnesota Department of Education in their P3 Principal Leadership Series.  I have started a blog.  

1. Provide appropriate staff development
   • Provide flipped PD
   • Teachers leading PD (play center activities)
2. Solid Understanding of developmental milestones
   • Become friends with the experts
   • Adjust schedule for success of students
   • School time: 8:30–2:05 with teacher prep time after school.
   • No specialists to reduce transitions for students
   • Teachers run everything
3. Parent Engagement
   • Connecting with Parents
   • Packers in Training
   • Being a partner
   • Community initiative for kids to be ready for Kindergarten, so local celebrities get in on the action for “Ready, Set, Go”
   • Make videos for parents
4. Be more knowledgable about preschool options in the community
   • Meet the pre-k providers and respect their work
   • Give parents information about Pre-K options.
   • Service learning opportunities for former students.

Principal’s academy

• Professional development for principals, in a cohort.
• Principal as an ethical leader: just, fair and caring
• How to deal with Social Media issues
• BIFF Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Sponsor: Sanebox

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

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New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Doug Timm is the principal of Carrie Downie Elementary School

• First principalship - innovative technology, focus on standards.
• Modern Teacher, Instructional Rounds. Cognitive growth targets (Bloom’s taxonomy)
• Think beyond comprehension and recall.
• What is the teacher doing and assigning?
• 6 different centers, but all 6 focused on retrieving and comprehending.
• How can we focus on more than the two basic levels?
• Charlotte’s Web in the city takes it up a level.
• Not all we are looking at, but major focus on tasks.
• I need to change what I am asking them to do to get them where I want them to be.
• Importance of how kids think. Why we need to make sure our kids are thinking beyond comprehending.
• Have to practice those skills.
• I don’t make inferences in observations anymore.
• Talk to kids during the observation. Sitting at a desk with the kids.
• Coaches (2) and Doug are assigned to teachers
• Teacher Name, Task, Where it falls in blooms taxonomy.
• What can you do to be a transformative principal? Walk around the building and see what focus you want to have: technology, literacy, math, student ownership. What do we have and how do we get to where we want to be? Keep the focus. There’s no end game.

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Sponsor: Sanebox

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Amy Locke graduated from the University of North Florida with a BA in Special Education: Deaf Studies and an M.Ed in Special Education: Deaf Education. She has been working in the field of Deaf Education for 7 years, beginning her career as an itinerant teacher for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in central Florida, then moving to Houston, TX to teach in a self-contained 3rd/4th grade class with DHH students. About 4 ½ years ago, she moved to Alabama to work as a reading teacher in the high school department at the Alabama School for the Deaf. In November 2014, she became the high school director.

The Alabama School for the Deaf currently has 178 students from all around our state, all of whom have a documented hearing loss. We have two academic departments here: Elementary serves students from age 3 through 6th grade and the High School department serves students in grades 7–12. We are a residential program and a little more half of them live on campus in our dorms. The rest are day students living within an hour of our school.

• Seats arranged in semi circles
• Classroom management
• Communication is very powerful among adults.
• Academic challenge is language.
• English is a second language.
• We can accidentally learn grammar and usage.
• Students become the teachers of the language when they surpass their parents in ability.
• Struggle showing knowledge on standardized test.
• Disconnect between scores they get and what they know.
• Transformation from advocate to getting what they need.
• IEP Meeting dad spent 30 minutes educating them on deaf education.
• Outsider because Amy is not hard of hearing.
• If you try, and give a valiant effort, the community will hear you.
• How to be a transformative principal: know your population: students, teachers, parents.

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Amy Locke graduated from the University of North Florida with a BA in Special Education: Deaf Studies and an M.Ed in Special Education: Deaf Education. She has been working in the field of Deaf Education for 7 years, beginning her career as an itinerant teacher for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in central Florida, then moving to Houston, TX to teach in a self-contained 3rd/4th grade class with DHH students. About 4 ½ years ago, she moved to Alabama to work as a reading teacher in the high school department at the Alabama School for the Deaf. In November 2014, she became the high school director.

The Alabama School for the Deaf currently has 178 students from all around our state, all of whom have a documented hearing loss. We have two academic departments here: Elementary serves students from age 3 through 6th grade and the High School department serves students in grades 7–12. We are a residential program and a little more half of them live on campus in our dorms. The rest are day students living within an hour of our school.  

• Wanted nothing to do with learning sign language.
• Small community, tightly knit.
• Culture is inviting.
• Switched at Birth
• There are always many opportunities to serve the hard of hearing students.
• Parental involvement is hard to come by because of logistics.
• IEPs over the phone.
• 16 teachers are deaf.
• Just started picture-in-picture with sign language interpreter.
• Huddle originated at a university for the deaf Galladette University.
• Travel to other deaf schools.
• Recruiting and hiring.
• Director for the high school
• Director for elementary
• Director for career teach
• Director for athletics
• Challenge to find other people to learn from.
• Applying learning from other principals to her school.
• Sending teachers to professional development.
• Bring more professional development to the school, rather than sending teachers out.
• Empowering teachers with technology.

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal