You have passed all of your assignments, waved farewell to your final placement classes and are now ready to be unleashed onto the world of teaching without a safety net.
The sit-and-get, one-size-fits-all model is disappearing. Taking its place are these 9 alternative models for teacher professional development.
The key to overcoming difficult emotions is mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness enables you to calm down and soothe yourself.
Staff Morale – Social Media – Reader Board – Student Recognition ~ All in one pack of Principal Tools for August. Principals ~ you are busy! This digital Principal Power Pack for August saves time and takes the guess work out of creating a positive school culture. These Principal Tools for August are ready to download now. Looking for a complete toolkit? Check out this year-long Principal’s Social Media Toolkit. Download all Power Packs now and save 25%. See the 12-month listing for the discount. Included in this Principal Power Pack: 2 Staff Appreciation Ready-to-Use PDFs. August is Back to School Month and the grand finale of Summer! There are two staff member appreciation cards: add Kit Kats for one, and Starburst for the other. Print, cut, add candy or gifts, and share with your team ~ that’s it! 2 Student Recognition Cards. There are 4 beautifully designed cards on each 8.5″ x 11″ page. Print, cut, personalize, and share with your students. 12 beautiful August-specific photos for your Newsletter, Social Media, or Webpage. These 1080 x 1080 pixel images are PNG files (high quality images). Themes include Back to School, school bus information, Summer, and Save the Dates. These photos do not contain copyright symbols; this purchase entitles you to royalty-free usage. Reader Board Inspiration PDF. This helpful guide will save you time and energy when planning for your reader board or Newsletter! It includes famous days in August history, fun facts and trivia, famous birthdays, celebration days in August, and other August celebrations. You’ll receive access to 17 digital files that you can save to your Google Drive, download, and use instantly. Each PDF is designed to print either on white paper or card stock, or on colored paper. These principal tools for August are quick and easy to access. Other Principal Productivity Tools: Principal’s Social Media Toolkit, which includes a ONE YEAR social media calendar, 50 photo quotations, and more. Download all Power Packs now and save 25%. This purchase is for one licensed copy of this Principal’s Power Pack for August; reproducing and distributing is prohibited. Copyright Sassy Bluejay LLC 2021 – All rights reserved.
This month my goal is to share some practical ideas with you. The first blog post of this series is focused on Systems Principals use to Communicate
The system of virtues developed for two millennia in the West was widely abandoned by the end of the eighteenth century. It was not dropped because it was found on careful consideration to be mistaken. It was merely set aside with a distracted casualness, or as associated with religious and political systems themselves suddenly objectionable.
Certain tasks are inherently rigorous, including reading idea-dense content, debate, using the writing process and even note-taking.
We created this MTSS intervention process flowchart so educators can see all the important interconnected components.
Discover 12 SMART goals templates to improve your success. Easy to use templates to help you set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely objectives. | SMART Goal Templates | SMART Goal Printables | Smart Goals Examples | Goal Setting Worksheet | Performance Goals | Life Skills | Goal Setting Template
I'm going to start off by prefacing STAAR testing is not fun for anyone. I can't sugar coat it. It is what it is. If you are not familiar
What does it take to move to the cloud? We talk with two Microsoft MVP's about what moving to the cloud means for customers, collaboration, development..
Your staff is one of the most valuable sources of information you have about how effectively you're doing your job. But are you asking?
Visit the post for more.
A collection of summaries, resources & examples of how to practically apply the Science of Reading in the classroom.
M and M Get to Know you Game - for groups to get to know each other | She's Crafty | www.shescraftycrafty.com | #gettoknowyougame #groupgames #mandmgame
You can challenge cognitive distortions and replace them with more realistic and accurate thinking using CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy.
The problem, as I see it, is not in having a culminating task but in planning an event or task that limits a student's creativity or expression in order to do
In his new book, Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders, educator and principal PJ Caposey offers school leaders three things: practical, down-to-earth advice for leading schools; concrete strategies in creating highly supportive school environments; and a compact approach to leadership that brings supporting staff, students, parents, and school community to the forefront. In one compact volume, Caposey offers principals four rules to guide them in building this culture of support. These rules include: 1. Support the vision, mission and goals. This is done through a process of defining and delineating a school’s current culture, aligning vision, mission, and goals, and monitoring the fidelity of school practices to each. Strategies Caposey offers to do these things include: 1) conducting a self-audit to assess the current school vision, mission, and goals, 2) engaging faculty in creating mission statements, 3) engaging faculty in visioning, 4) developing school improvement plans, 5) principal measures to support the vision, mission, and school improvement goals. Caposey offers school leaders seasoned strategies for engaging in developing and supporting a school’s vision, mission, and goals. 2. Support the professionals. Supporting a school’s professionals, according to Caposey, includes making expectations clear, having tough conversations, leading professional development, sharing leadership, fostering positive relationships, and engaging in fair but effective evaluations. In this book, he gives school principals some highly effective tools to use to support the professionals in a school. Some of these tools include: 1)Best Practices for Difficult Conversations, 2) Delegating Strategies, 3) Building and Maintaining Beneficial Relationships, and 4) Conducting Informal Observations and Effective Evaluations. Caposey offers a toolbox full of ideas to engage in supporting a building’s professionals. 3. Support the students. Support for students in a “highly supportive school culture” begins with the school leader engaging as instructional leader. It also includes transforming instruction, making it more rigorous and making it learner-focused. Caposey provides classroom management ideas and intervention strategies as well. Some of the strategies he suggests includes: 1) Defining the Curriculum, 2) Monitoring the Progress of Rigor Implementation, 3) Making Sure Policy Never Overrides Practice, 4) Student Engagement, and a host of other strategies designed to support students. 4. Support the community. Caposey points out a fourth rule in creating a highly supportive school culture involves doing things like making the school the center of pride in the community and engaging in effective communication with that community.To foster effective communication with the community, school leaders need to do things like establish rules at the beginning, maintain consistency, and engage community support for the school. In each chapter, Caposey walks through each rule, providing careful explanations and concrete strategies to engage in the implementation of each one. For example, Chapter 2 is devoted to rule 1, “Supporting the vision, mission, and goals.” Caposey writes, “By consciously starting with the end in mind, an effective principal can move to the forefront the things that should be truly important to a school and community---enacting the vision and mission of the school or district.” In other words, if you’re going to build a school that has supporting all of its constituents at the center, the vision, mission and goals are the starting point. This chapter provides school leaders with steps to take in support of the vision, mission and goals outlined in school improvement plans. It gives principals tools to conduct fidelity checks to see how the school is doing against its mission, vision and school improvement plans. In each of the subsequent chapters, Caposey tackles the question of how to build this culture of support with all the constituencies of a school. Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders is a must-read book for school leaders who are looking for strategies to be supportive in today’s public education environment. For those new school leaders, this book is an opportunity to pick the brain of a seasoned, practicing school principal about transforming a school into a highly supportive one. For the veteran school principal, this book offers a clear opportunity to fine-tune and sharpen their leadership skills that foster highly effective and supportive schools for all. Building a Culture of Support: Strategies for School Leaders is an excellent addition to the 21st century administrator’s library.
Teacher morale is an important part of the school community. Teachers are unique, we are used to fending for ourselves, and pulling ourselves out of even the deepest of funks. This doesn't mean we don't like a little morale booster from time to time.
Objective: participants work together to move entire group across simulated “lava river” Emphasis · Develop cohesion and teamwork · Enhance communication skills · Stimulate care and concern for others through individual and group responsibility · Identify or improve leadership potential · Establish support systems Materials · A large open area, a hallway or gymnasium floor · One block, brick or rock for each participant (various sizes of cut 2”x4” work very well. Pick up scrap lumber, different shaped wood from a construction site or a piece of paper if you are really low on budget/time) Instructions · Mark a start and finish line on the field · Give each participant one block. Explain the only place a team member can step is on the blocks · Team members lay down the blocks one at a time in a line toward the finish point, with team members standing on the blocks. It will be necessary to share blocks in order that an extra block is made available · Pass the extra block to the front team member who places it on the ground in front of him · Repeat this process until all have crossed the “lava river” Variations · Have each member choose a block that represents them. then allow each member to share with the group the attributes that the block possesses that are similar to the individual. Do not give any instructions as to how to complete the task. Remind them the block represents themselves and others and they need to learn and practice using themselves and others as a support system · Teach social responsibility by establishing the rule that if one team member steps off the blocks or has some other miscue where the floor is touched, the entire team must return to the beginning to start the exercise again · Divide large groups into competing teams and challenge each other to the finish line, or race against set time · Give an extra block to the group, or take one block away · Blindfold a member of the group to increase care and responsibility for one another · Individuals must step on the blocks and not skate across the area on them · Do not give specific instructions, but tell group to figure out possibilities The group must get everyone through an electric tunnel. No one can touch any of the interior or exterior sides of the tunnel or anything that is touching those sides. The group is provided with some “insulated blocks.” Location should be any open area where a tunnel can be improvised out of boxes, etc. or an area where a tunnel area Image credit: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1O1D-3RK-FCODUOUGrWnSDhDGxzyAiY3WvVV8MLp8KthusIvKK93UaXPNmnHuMupkhxG43d4ucf6RkvPMKuLXzmCXsZd6I7MDH7f6Jid5TD3mEZVhiIY1PobBqmxLSFBn2AJCLnXE3yE/s1600/IMG_3220.JPG
In this month’s blog revisit, I am looking back at a post I wrote originally in 2017 on using social media and mobile devices in the classroom. To be transparent, I am struggling with what I …
Every person has the opportunity to recognize and tackle the subtle ways that implicit bias shapes everyday interactions as well as decision-making.
Schools are busy and complex places. Whenever you bring several hundred people together for an extended period of time on a regular basis complexity is likely to thrive. One way to consider the complexity involved in the average school might be to map the connections and interactions which exist. St
In this book you will: • Understand key characteristics of design thinking • Understand the 5 action phases of design thinking – Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test • Empathize- Understand your customers / users • Define- Define clear project / business objectives • Ideate- Explore ideas and solutions • Prototype- Build and visualise ideas • Test- Review and decide best idea
HR Expert | Leadership & Career Coach and Mentor | Empowering women and organisations to Lead and Thrive!
Most educators desire meaningful feedback that can be used as a catalyst for growth. When it comes to improving learning, criticism will rarely, if ever at all, lead to changes to professional practice. Here is the main difference between the two: Feedback - information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc., used as a basis for improvement. Criticism - the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes. As you reflect on the two definitions above, what pathway would you prefer? Successful feedback lies in a variety of factors such as delivery in a timely manner, detailing practical or specific strategies for improvement, ensuring the delivery is positive, consistently providing it, and at times choosing the right medium to convey the message. However, one of the most important considerations is to ensure that a two-way conversation takes place where there is a dialogue, not a monologue. Virtually no educator wants to have suggestions dictated to him or her. A recent coaching visit with Corinth Elementary School placed me in a position to model all of the above. Over the course of the year, I have been working with the district on building pedagogical capacity both with and without technology. After visiting numerous classrooms, I met with a grade-level team and the administrators to facilitate a dialogue as part of a more meaningful feedback conversation. Instead of just telling them what I saw and thought, I instead had them pair up and discuss their lessons using the following question prompts: How do you think the lesson or activity went? What would you have done differently? The point here was for them to begin to reflect on both the positive outcomes as well as the challenges that might have been experienced. Lasting improvement comes from our own realizations as to what can be done to grow and improve rather than just being told. After some volunteers shared how they thought the lesson went, I then challenged them with the following questions to facilitate a more in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of the lesson from their lens: How do you know your kids learned? Where was the level of thinking? How did kids apply their thinking in relevant and meaningful ways? How did you push all kids regardless of where they were? What role did technology have in the process? What accountability structures were put in place? What do you think your kids thought of the lesson? These questions really got both the teachers and administrators in the room to think more critically about whether or not the lesson or activity achieved the desired outcome in relation to the aligned goal. What was powerful from my seat was that most of the feedback I had written down didn't have to be delivered verbally by me as the educators offered it up themselves upon critical analysis of their lessons. This is not to say that I didn't add more detail or provide specific strategies to improve. I most certainly did, but the culture that was created through the use of all the above questions was more empowering and designed to impart a great sense of ownership amongst everyone present. Whether peer to peer or from a supervisory position, engage in a collaborative dialogue during any feedback conversation. Then provide time to process, further reflect, and develop action steps for improvement. I hope you find the questions in this post as useful as I have.
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The World Café is one of the best Opening methods for harvesting ideas and bringing diverse stakeholders together. More structured than Open Space, the World Café directs the power of simultaneous diverse group discussions towards set questions. Participants break into small groups
In a Charlotte Mason education (To which we now primarily subscribe), you will hear certain terms and phrases, like "copywork", that may seem foreign when thinking about education. Charlotte Mason was a British educator in the late 1800's that revolutionized how the upbringing and education of a child should be approached. Her philosophy is best understood by reading her 6-volume set of books she wrote for the people of her time.
Copywork is a simple task that yields high results in the areas of handwriting, and vocabulary. Read more about the benefits of copywork.
Buy vs. Lease a Car explained! Learn whether to buy or lease a car with these simple, visual, stress-saving financial tips from Napkin Finance .
