Have a Good Life

Keara Mascareñaz Managing Partner, Organizational Design at Education Elements. She helps schools and districts focuses build and scale a culture of innovation through leadership development, team habits, and human-centered organizational design.

• Learning, meeting, projects
• How do you create the environment of psychological safety?
• the team that is more effective would be making less mistakes.
• more comfort to talk about mistakes
• Amy Edmondson TED talk
• I didn’t say “I don’t know what I’m doing!“
• It can feel high stakes, even though it is not.
• Two types of leaders: one best ideas should strive - leaders are smarter and make fewer mistakes.
• Interrogating archetypes.
• Two books: Multipliers with Liz Wiseman As soon as a speaker starts speaking, everyone stops talking.
• Here’s my interview with Liz Wiseman.
• Talking about Failure is crucial for Growth
• Noticing it is the first step to change.
• It’s hard to make big shifts.
• What foundation have I laid and signal have I given to my team about this?
• “I’ve had good ideas before that haven’t worked out!”
• So much deference made to people in power and authority.
• Habit of talking about mistakes.
• The more people in power can model talking about mistakes the more you can model and give more power to your people.
• How to be a transformative principal? Next time you’re in front of your staff think about 1. Learning challenge, vulnerability, asking for advice.

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

A Story about Fish with Danny Bauer and Dr. Kelly Crane Transformative Principal 302

Social media: All of us are better than any of us.

Danny Bauer and Kelly Crane are co-conspirators of Better Leaders Better Schools

• What do principals need to know about being a superintendent.
• Legal, politics, finance.
• Network.
• How to start acting as if.
• All of us are better than any of us.
• When you’re so close to the situation, it is really hard to see.
• Instructional leadership knowledge.
• Following through.
• Being authentic.
• Empathy when visiting
• Vulnerability.
• Radical listening.
• The mastermind is a sacred space.
• You gotta learn from the mistakes of others.
• How to be a transformative principal? Danny: Join a PLN! Kelly: be vulnerable when it is necessary. We don’t know it all and we have to reach out to others.

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Adam Fachler has a proven process for planning amazing lessons. Take the 

• EMPOWER Method for planning amazing lessons.
• We are all searching!
• Little quality control

• Making inquiry method a little less messy.
• Envision - see the end in mind.
• Map - simplifies a complex process.
• Prime - prior knowledge, emotional aspect of learning
• Orient
• Walkthrough
• Explore
• Reflect
• Teachers’ time to plan is too little. Yes this does take time.
• Whether you win in your classroom is decided well before you enter the classroom.
• Do this at the unit level - a time investment.
• Crystalize your learning outcome in a GEM: goal, evidence, measure of success.
• You are envisioning a destination for them.
• Mapping the path to mastery.
• School in the Square
• How to be a transformative principal? Start from the beginning, what’s the GEM for your upcoming unit?

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Here's some excitement: Episode 300! I give updates on my professional life, the podcast, and more! Tune in!

Link to my speaking page

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Dr. Grayson Maas is the Director of Communications for the Art of Problem Solving, a unique solution to teaching math anytime, anywhere.

• Talking about dissertation - how we create scientific knowledge as a society - who can become a scientist and who cannot.
• Scientific knowledge and how it gets created.
• It’s no secret that there’s underrepresentation in science.
• What is funneling certain groups towards science and what is not?
• Science for all
• Tests measure what we value.
• Tests can be an unreliable indicator.
• It’s a common experience that the scores you got on classes and tests to tell you if you’re smart.
• All those tests are telling you, “are you good at that instrument on that day?”
• Extremely difficult to identify high-ability kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Ability grouping is not a bad thing for the kids in the high group.
• Kids know who is in different groups.
• We need to reconfigure the labels we use.
• For us to lose sight of kids that don’t get extra opportunities is not working for those kids.
• It’s incumbent on us as a society to meet these kids where they’re at.
• Providing the “right” amount of challenge.
• We’re going to set the bar right above where you grasp it and help them reach the next level.
• You deserve to be challenged and we’re going to make sure you get that.
• Learning about the water cycle.
• Their version of learning about the water cycle was a youtube water cycle rap song.
• The kids in the low group developed low self-perception.
• Constantly reinforce these students and tell them they are capable and can accomplish the work before them.

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

I am super excited whenever I get to talk with Will Parker, and today is no different.

Today we are tackling three questions that principal listeners have shared with us from our podcasts, covering these topics:

 

1. What to do if or when your teachers give you the cold shoulder about learning something new. 

2. How to manage student dynamics in competency-based instruction. 

3. Ways to measuring student growth in Social Emotional Learning settings.

 

Listen-in for the complete conversation.

 

Questions for Jethro and Will:

 

1. My teachers give me the cold shoulder when I try to introduce them to new ways of teaching. What should I do?

 

• Jethro and I discuss the following:

• Modeling for teachers

• Observation of other teachers

• What is he/she doing well already? Praise first, then instruct.

• Lead with the question, “Where do you want to grow?”

• Creating an enviornment where teachers ask for help

• Celebrating innovative teaching

• Learning to say yes before saying no

 

2. How do you make sure that students who struggle don't feel embarrassed or ashamed that they aren't working with their peers? When competency-based, what happens?...

 

We discuss this question with suggestions about:

• Defining expecations so that students measure against standards, not other students

• They are already in different places! Your expectations matter in their perceptions...

• Help them identify where they are good. And celebrate!

• It’s not about competition with peers, but competition with themselves. 

 

3. How can Social Emotional Learning success be measured?

 

We respond with the following:

Discover the importantce of self-reflection. It’s okay to embrace different standards for everyone. 

Resilient students don’t really need more resiliency training. They need something else. 

A student with trauma needs different things than a student without. 

Creat an environment where you want your own chidren

You can measure the indicators like discipline, attendance and graduation/completion rates 

We share examples of SEL through FOMO -- karaoke cafeteria -- from Principal Kim Coody’s High School in Okahoma and Amy Fast’s emotional learning practices in Oregon

Recource recommended: Barb Sorrels - http://transformativeprincipal.org/episode269

 

 

 

Now It’s Your Turn

What is one new method or strategy you could model for your teachers or team? How can you instll in others the freedom to believe it’s okay to try and fail and in learning? And how can you celebrate the wins along the way?

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Akhil is the business development manager at ChargePoint, a fast-growing start-up in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides electric vehicle charging solutions to businesses. Prior to ChargePoint, he spent 5 years in the clean tech and consumer mobile app spaces. Akhil is an alumnus from the 2010 Conrad Challenge, where his finalist team from the North Carolina School of Science and Math designed a latticed pod system that generated electricity from wave energy using internally-housed piezoelectric ceramics.

Register for the Conrad challenge here

* North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics
* Didn’t know what I wanted to do.
* Always wanted to be a doctor and ended up doing a ton of work in environmental areas.
* Starting out with very little information.
* Students start from two different places.
* 1. Technology they are really excited about.
* 2. We have a group of students really passionate about a specific problem and start to ideate about how to solve that problem.
* We knew we wanted to build a wave energy device.
* Knew nothing about piezoelectric ceramics.
* Spent hours learning about the physics behind the technology.
* Chemistry professor - her job was keeping us accountable.
* What has changed since you did Conrad Challenge?
* Shifted from focus on medicine to product management.
* Conrad in college admissions process.
* Spoke about the spirit of creativity.
* most capable people I’ve ever known. Still in touch with many of them today.
* I discovered my purpose. It challenged me to be a change-maker!
* Group of students created a device to put out fires by sound waves in forests.
* We champion no-box thinking.
* How to be a transformative principal? Embrace divergent thinking.

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal