Have a Good Life

 

Christopher is a principal at Whitman Hansen Regional High School.

• Transitioning to a new high school.
• A new position gives you the opportunity to reflect on where you want to go and who you want to go.
• Sharing yourself first.
• I’m not a student-centered principal!
• I’m a staff-centered principal.
• Build staff meetings around getting to know each other.
• Building relationships
• Every day, with some exceptions, I’m in classrooms giving feedback to teachers.
• Out in front playing music with kids.
• Using Voxer to give immediate feedback and face-to-face meetings.
• Three simple questions: What’s working? What do I need to stop doing? What can I do to make your life better or easier?
• Start by supporting, then you engage them, then you empower them.
• A good leader is a servant leader.
• A good leader becomes a better leader by making others more successful.
• Clear the road for others.
• Experience is so important and we have to fail to keep learning.
• We don’t know how good we can be.
• Every student leaving the high school with something in their pocket to prepare them for the next level.
• Key components of S1 to raise failing grade to passing grade.
• Empowering teachers to give kids hope and keep integrity of the grades.
• Teachers choose most important units and then give kids an opportunity to make things happen.
• 92% of the kids who did winter school passed the year-long course.
• Summer Read Smackdown!
• Interdisciplinary days - kids don’t come back to a test on the book.
• How to be a transformative principal? Get into classrooms and give honest feedback to teachers so you can have a conversation with them.

 

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

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

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

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New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

 

Mike Fisher author of Hacking Instructional Design. Shoutout to @elizabethfisher

• All this stuff that is eating up teachers’ time to plan.
• Easier to just purchase a program or a plan.
• Shift focus to contemporary instructional design.
• Why is it so hard to move away from
• Decision paralysis. So many decisions to make that we don’t know what to do.
• How well we need to design assessments.
• Standards, resources, external assessments.
• The What - standards
• The How - activities
• The How Well? - assessments.
• Tripticks from AAA
• Trying things out - gives you some freedom.
• Being a lead learner is pushed aside to get things done.
• Right-sizing the work. Allow students to be cocreators in instructional design.
• Breaking the standard into manageable bits for teachers and for students.
• Learning targets “standard statement“ with I can in front of it.
• Help students have high level of mastery.
• Kids do not care about your grades!
• Let them be accountable to each other and accountable to the world.
• How to be a transformative Principal? Invite conversation, collaboration. How do we remain loyal to the learner and learning?

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

This is a keynote that I presented for the Alaska Society for Technology in Education Conference in February. Here is the link to the video of it. 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

 

Byron Darnall is the principal of Potter Gray Elementary School in Bowling Green Kentucky

• Long term sustainable change is slow.
• How do you improve something that is already successful?
• Examine the student experience.
• Who’s school is it?
• As educators we tend to operate from the center.
• Busyness is the disease of our time.
• How are you? Busy! <-bothersome
• “I would love to, but I’m too busy.“
• Am I too busy to get better?
• How to be less busy?
• Every day shouldn’t lead to absolute exhaustion.
• There is nothing easy about it, but we have to be open to finding someone we trust to give us good feedback about our time management
• Systems thinking - not exposed to it as a teacher or
• Centralize school-wide communication through a blog. If it matters, it is on the blog.
• If it can’t be said in 1-2 sentences, it’s a conversation.
• How to be a transformative principal? Talk to your students and ask them questions.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

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

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.  

Take Control of your email

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

 

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

RTI process for Lyn Marsilio's elementary school.

• Set a couple goals: know their letters, ICU.
• 4 rotations, 6 minute rotations
• Letter writing, letter sorts, tracing, sound sorts.
• After the first 20 days, graduated kids went back into the classroom.
• Did a round 2 to add rhyming and took out tactile piece.
• Taking attendance for kids to see how many times they went to this intervention.
• Out of the 20 days, some kids only made 14, and so called him to make sure kids
• Our third round, the teachers are finally seeing why we take data.
• Kids making the goals early are taking off in other areas because they had those foundational skills.
• 80% on grade level vs. 40% that were on grade level last year.
• Narrows down who needs special skills.
• In the past, title I data has felt like a collection with no meaning. Up until this year, that has been data that we collect, not that we use.
• Teachers plan it, teacher assistants implement it.
• 1st grade - 46 kids, three title I teachers are working with these kids. We have seen 84% of the kids in 1st grade making progress.
• Co planning with the reading teachers.
• In second grade, about 50% of kids have rotated out because of progress.
• There is a great benefit in being targeted.
• 3rd graders, all but 2 of the 25 kids needing intervention are making great progress.
• Lots of young staff, and they are still doing well.
• Teachers are seeing why the planning is affecting instruction and what that impact is.
• foundational skills in 2nd and 3rd grade: decoding, then once they hit grade level, push comprehension.
• Holding on to them a little longer.
• Got push back in the beginning because we are doing something different.
• Now that they are seeing why we structured that the way did, there is more excitement.
• 2nd and 3rd grade, asked teachers for input to make sure they felt supported.
• Success is contagious.
• What haven't we figured out: 4th and 5th grade.
• Looking at budget as people and not programs.
• We are getting kids to be readers.

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Larry Villiard is the principal of a K-12 school in Bruce Wisconsin.

• Leadership team, started with 12 people, now we have up to 20 people come to the leadership team meeting each month. Follow up leadership team meeting after PD.
• Anybody who wants to be part of leadership team can join us.
• Leadership Meeting norms.
• Six Step Process
• Weekly article share at 7:30
• Book studies.
• Tight and loose.
• Need more time if we are going to teach the curriculum with fidelity.
• Seniors leave a week earlier than the rest of the student body, so they are going to do a test run with the new schedule.
• How to be a transformative principal? Have an open mind. Tap into your talented staff.
• call bruce high school.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

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

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.  

Take Control of your email

Web Site

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Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

 

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

 

Larry Villiard is the principal of a K-12 school in Bruce Wisconsin.

• Larry has been there since 1995
• Moved from a junior high school to a middle school.
• About 500 students
• 2 classes per grade
• Middle school has a separate schedule from everyone else. Extended core classes 80 minutes long.
• The staff is the key to making kids successful.
• How has the PLC approach helped you.
• Took ideas from the staff to make it successful. Transitions getting kids moving around more.
• Give kids 20 minutes of homework time during the class period.
• Lengthened class periods decreased ODRs.
• A small little man can't make all the decisions.
• People couldn't believe that people just went about their business when they visited the school.
• In one school year, we lost superintendent and elementary principal. I was going to be moved out of my comfort zone.
• They came back like new staff, like new people.
• A PLC cannot be a set of meetings!
• A PLC has to become your culture.
• Take what is working best and eliminate what is not working.
• Data Days 3 times per year - drives all interventions
• Were dead last in our achievement and now are in 1st place.

Schedule a call with Jethro

Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life!

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

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.  

Take Control of your email

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

 

 

 

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal