“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.” —Maya Angelou
When Muriel Summers was given an ultimatum to either reinvent A. B. Combs or be shut down in 1999, she led her staff in the implementation of a new leadership model that soon took the education field by storm. The Leader in Me was most definitely a “solitary fantasy” for A. B. Combs and it’s almost unbelievable to think that The Leader in Me was once a “solitary fantasy” for Cooper. We have transformed hundreds of students’ realities through the Leader in Me journey at Cooper and it has changed all of us along the way too. In our busy lives, we often stop to reflect, to look around, and to ponder the influence we have on those around us. However, as Albert Schweitzer once said, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
We led by example and they have followed. Cleveland, Randolph, and Emerson became Leader in Me schools in September 2013. Garfield is starting their journey in September 2014. Rosedale, Hayes, Grant, and Webster have all been in talks with Terry and are in various stages on their leadership path. Cooper was and continues to be a leader in Livonia Public Schools. With the invitation to be on the school tour for the Michigan Symposium (Michigan is one of 14 states and 1 province to hold Leader in Me Symposiums), we have demonstrated that we are a leader in our state and country as well.
Schedule for January 24, 2014
Monday: Whalers 9:15-11:45
Variety Show Auditions
Tuesday: Treats from Enthusiasm Team in the lounge
Report Card Deadline at midnight
IST 8:30
Variety Show Auditions
Wednesday: EPT 8:30
Whalers 9:15-11:45
School Improvement Work 8:30-3:00 (Robin and Sarah) Johnson
Sports Club 3:45
Planning Team 3:45
6th grade Math Meeting Bill Leitz’s parent meeting 6:00
Thursday: Staff Meeting 8:00
Lighthouse Team Meeting 8:00
Friday: Career Day 9:00-12:00
Report Cards go home
School Improvement Plan Due
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Update for 1-21-14
This week finally ended. The death of Cleveland teacher Jim Schettenhelm last Wednesday has left an indelible mark on the students he loved and who loved him, and the staff members he befriended, helped, and made lives easier. It was Jim's niche to make lives feel easier, more important than without his touch.
Baruti Kafele, author of Closing the Attitude Gap: How to Fire Up Your Students to Strive for Success, writes that we need to be very aware what our students hear, see, and feel when they are in our school and classrooms. We control the climate in all we say, do and how we promote the learning feel. Jim was so good at making kids feel at home, feel like they mattered, that they could succeed at the assignments he gave. When we hear students talk about him, they say he loved them and they knew it. That is Jim's legacy. Our students who were so distraught Friday morning, talked with us about how he made them feel, what they saw, and what they heard when they were with Jim.
Our legacy with our students is no different. They will remember what they felt, heard, and saw. When you come back to Cooper on Tuesday, refreshed from a much needed long weekend, look around your room. Listen, look, and imagine how you would feel in your classroom. As the day progresses, keep those things in mind as your students experience our school.
What would you like them to say about their day? What can you do to make sure it happens in the best ways for them?
Schedule for the week:
Monday 20th: No School MLK Day
Tuesday 21: Sarah OSS meeting 1:30-4:00
Wednesday 22: Breakfast with Randy, 7:30, Terry
Whalers 9:15-11:45
Admin Eval Mtg., 9:30, Terry @ CO
Sarah QAR meeting time ?
Thursday 23: LAST DAY OF MARKING PERIOD
Career Day sub planning
8:00 Staff Meeting
EPM meeting 12:00 (CCSS book study)
Friday 24: TEACHER WORKDAY--BUILDING OPTIONAL
8:00 Administrator Evaluation Presentation CO
LEADS Board mtg immediately following
Baruti Kafele, author of Closing the Attitude Gap: How to Fire Up Your Students to Strive for Success, writes that we need to be very aware what our students hear, see, and feel when they are in our school and classrooms. We control the climate in all we say, do and how we promote the learning feel. Jim was so good at making kids feel at home, feel like they mattered, that they could succeed at the assignments he gave. When we hear students talk about him, they say he loved them and they knew it. That is Jim's legacy. Our students who were so distraught Friday morning, talked with us about how he made them feel, what they saw, and what they heard when they were with Jim.
Our legacy with our students is no different. They will remember what they felt, heard, and saw. When you come back to Cooper on Tuesday, refreshed from a much needed long weekend, look around your room. Listen, look, and imagine how you would feel in your classroom. As the day progresses, keep those things in mind as your students experience our school.
What would you like them to say about their day? What can you do to make sure it happens in the best ways for them?
Schedule for the week:
Monday 20th: No School MLK Day
Tuesday 21: Sarah OSS meeting 1:30-4:00
Wednesday 22: Breakfast with Randy, 7:30, Terry
Whalers 9:15-11:45
Admin Eval Mtg., 9:30, Terry @ CO
Sarah QAR meeting time ?
Thursday 23: LAST DAY OF MARKING PERIOD
Career Day sub planning
8:00 Staff Meeting
EPM meeting 12:00 (CCSS book study)
Friday 24: TEACHER WORKDAY--BUILDING OPTIONAL
8:00 Administrator Evaluation Presentation CO
LEADS Board mtg immediately following
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Cultivating Gratitude
Did you make a New Year’s Resolution? Approximately 40% of Americans make New
Year’s Resolutions but only 8% achieve them. Why? Usually
our New Year’s Resolutions are too long and not specific enough. By focusing on one or two goals and
making them specific, we are more likely to achieve our goals. Research shows that tracking and
sharing goals increases the possibility of achieving our goals even more. Sound familiar? Data Notebooks, Wildly Important Goals (WIGS), Data Charts,
and Accountability Partners!
Sarah’s Goals for this year are to
-Cultivate gratitude.
-Exercise at least four days a week.
Now I realize that only the second goal is specific
enough. I have a 14 week training
schedule on my fridge to prepare me for running the Kentucky Derby Half
Marathon in April and I have two accountability partners, my husband and best
friend. (I’ve also just shared
this goal with all of you.) I need to work on the other two but I
am planning on making my own vision board for home. http://www.thewellnesswarrior.com.au/2012/01/how-to-create-a-vision-board/
Big Rocks:
A big thank you to our clean up crew. Jeff, Paul, Kenny, and Linda worked
long hours to clean up the mess from the water pipes. Also, thank you to Michelle Stackpoole, Mary Ann Bubar, Pat
Abele, and Colleen Sweeney for being so flexible with their schedules Friday
when they were displaced from their rooms.
Monday: 8:00 Career Day Meeting LMC
Tuesday: 8:15-3:45 CCSS Meeting at CO (Sarah and Wendy)
9:30-11:00 LIM Principals' Meeting (Terry)
Wednesday: 11:00-12:00 Literacy Leader Principal Meeting at CO (Sarah)
Sports Club 3:35
Thursday: 7:30 Advisory meeting (Terry)
8:30-3:30 School Improvement Meeting at Johnson (Sarah and Robin)
3:45-4:45 Extended Staff Meeting
Friday: 10:00-12:00 DAC meeting (Terry)
5:00 Staff Gathering at Doc's
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Weekly Update January 6, 2014
Blog Entry #2
Weekly Update for January 6, 2014
Please be sure to review procedures and rules for indoor recesses as well as hallway behaviors with your students. They will need some reminders as we get back in the swing of things.
Here is our schedule:
Iowa/CoGAT for the next three weeks. Please be cognizant of noise levels in the hallways as sixth graders will be testing at all times/any times.
Monday: Snow Day
Tuesday: Too Cold Day
Wednesday: 8:00 Center EPT
8:00 LEADS Eval mtg (Terry at CO)
3:35 Sports Club
Thursday: 8:00 Staff Mtg
Noon Elementary Principals Mtg (Sarah and Terry, CO)
3:35 Four Square Club
Friday: 10:00 DAC (Terry @ CO)
Note: There were meetings lost due to the snow days that may be added.
Learning and Leading: It's our mission!
Weekly Update for January 6, 2014
Please be sure to review procedures and rules for indoor recesses as well as hallway behaviors with your students. They will need some reminders as we get back in the swing of things.
Here is our schedule:
Iowa/CoGAT for the next three weeks. Please be cognizant of noise levels in the hallways as sixth graders will be testing at all times/any times.
Monday: Snow Day
Tuesday: Too Cold Day
Wednesday: 8:00 Center EPT
8:00 LEADS Eval mtg (Terry at CO)
3:35 Sports Club
Thursday: 8:00 Staff Mtg
Noon Elementary Principals Mtg (Sarah and Terry, CO)
3:35 Four Square Club
Friday: 10:00 DAC (Terry @ CO)
Note: There were meetings lost due to the snow days that may be added.
Learning and Leading: It's our mission!
Thursday, January 2, 2014
January 2, 2014
Happy New Year!
And welcome to our new weblog, our blog, called Learning and Leading!
It's sometimes dangerous to go to a conference. I (Terry) was at the MEMSPA conference in early December. One of the sessions I attended was on using blogs as a better way to communicate with staff and even with parents and students.
Sarah and I are trying this new format as a new way of creating and posting the Weekly Updates, as well as sharing information, posting videos, polling staff, etc. This will become our new way to be more inclusive of the types of information we'd like to share. We can link our blog to twitter accounts, TedTalks, book studies, and more.
This blog, at least for now, will be used only by Cooper staff. Sarah and I will monitor posts for a while as we learn more about how this venue works. Feel free to comment! We will post relavent comments from staff so we are all communicating better.
Any idea why our blog is called "Learning and Leading"? Of course! It's Cooper's mission statement. More than that, it's our mission. Everything we do can and should be measured against its affect on learning and its affect on leading.
We are a LEADERSHIP SCHOOL!! We started this process three years ago. Staff agreed and committed Cooper to The Leader In Me process. We all knew then that the process would take time, that we are evolving the leadership processes and melding our curriculum to match the focus. With the addition of Leadership Notebooks, Data Walls, and +/Delta charts, we continue to progress toward changing the culture, moving us and our students to set and reach personal and academic goals.
In an interesting book, Closing The Attitude Gap, by Baruti Kafele, Principal Kafele examines what happens in schools where teacher have high expectations for student effort, where students set individual goals with teacher help, where goals are monitored for progress and examined for effective practices (by teachers and students) to achieve success. He describes so many of the components of a successful, effective Leader In Me school that Tammy Spangler-Timm and I spoke with him at MEMSPA. He had never heard of The Leader In Me. Yet his success as a principal and the gains of his students and staff are reflected in all the same practices The Leader In Me promotes. He was able to move a middle school labeled as "persistently dangerous" under the No Child Left Behind rules to some of the highest achievement levels in New Jersey. His research on these practices is solid. Principal Kafele is now a national speaker on what really works in education. His book is powerful as a guide to providing unlimited potential for high achievement, while maintaining a whole child approach for each student.
The way Kafele describes his school sounds so much the way I describe Cooper to people: High poverty (his school was 100% free lunch); large gaps in achievement; a dedicated, highly motivated staff; parents interested in progress for their students, but not really knowing how to help make that happen (in fact, some home habits are detrimental). Kafele and his staff were able to overcome the issues of high poverty and parent apathy by focusing on the things they could control. One of the most important changes they made was to focus on mission statements, including school, classroom, and personal mission statements.
We also need to return to a focus on the mission. We are a leadership school. Our mission is Learning and Leading. Many classes are writing mission statements. Bill Lietz shared a power point that helps teachers lead their classes in the process of creating a mission statement. Sarah and I are very interested in your progress on your class mission statements: Why do you and your students come to Cooper every day?
And welcome to our new weblog, our blog, called Learning and Leading!
It's sometimes dangerous to go to a conference. I (Terry) was at the MEMSPA conference in early December. One of the sessions I attended was on using blogs as a better way to communicate with staff and even with parents and students.
Sarah and I are trying this new format as a new way of creating and posting the Weekly Updates, as well as sharing information, posting videos, polling staff, etc. This will become our new way to be more inclusive of the types of information we'd like to share. We can link our blog to twitter accounts, TedTalks, book studies, and more.
This blog, at least for now, will be used only by Cooper staff. Sarah and I will monitor posts for a while as we learn more about how this venue works. Feel free to comment! We will post relavent comments from staff so we are all communicating better.
Any idea why our blog is called "Learning and Leading"? Of course! It's Cooper's mission statement. More than that, it's our mission. Everything we do can and should be measured against its affect on learning and its affect on leading.
We are a LEADERSHIP SCHOOL!! We started this process three years ago. Staff agreed and committed Cooper to The Leader In Me process. We all knew then that the process would take time, that we are evolving the leadership processes and melding our curriculum to match the focus. With the addition of Leadership Notebooks, Data Walls, and +/Delta charts, we continue to progress toward changing the culture, moving us and our students to set and reach personal and academic goals.
In an interesting book, Closing The Attitude Gap, by Baruti Kafele, Principal Kafele examines what happens in schools where teacher have high expectations for student effort, where students set individual goals with teacher help, where goals are monitored for progress and examined for effective practices (by teachers and students) to achieve success. He describes so many of the components of a successful, effective Leader In Me school that Tammy Spangler-Timm and I spoke with him at MEMSPA. He had never heard of The Leader In Me. Yet his success as a principal and the gains of his students and staff are reflected in all the same practices The Leader In Me promotes. He was able to move a middle school labeled as "persistently dangerous" under the No Child Left Behind rules to some of the highest achievement levels in New Jersey. His research on these practices is solid. Principal Kafele is now a national speaker on what really works in education. His book is powerful as a guide to providing unlimited potential for high achievement, while maintaining a whole child approach for each student.
The way Kafele describes his school sounds so much the way I describe Cooper to people: High poverty (his school was 100% free lunch); large gaps in achievement; a dedicated, highly motivated staff; parents interested in progress for their students, but not really knowing how to help make that happen (in fact, some home habits are detrimental). Kafele and his staff were able to overcome the issues of high poverty and parent apathy by focusing on the things they could control. One of the most important changes they made was to focus on mission statements, including school, classroom, and personal mission statements.
We also need to return to a focus on the mission. We are a leadership school. Our mission is Learning and Leading. Many classes are writing mission statements. Bill Lietz shared a power point that helps teachers lead their classes in the process of creating a mission statement. Sarah and I are very interested in your progress on your class mission statements: Why do you and your students come to Cooper every day?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)