Sunday, January 24, 2016

Student Centered Leadership

"Cooper is like a bagel and the Leader in Me is the cream cheese."
Martina, 5th grade


Some of our student lighthouse leaders joined us last Tuesday for our Lighthouse meeting.  I took the most notes I have all year.  They spoke with enthusiasm, happy to have their voice heard, and were obviously proud of the leadership roles they held at school.

Sometimes our jobs and daily lives become so busy that we fail to remember what really matters.  We confuse busyness with progress.  We fail to stop and listen.  Our students have things to say.  Important things.  Often, what they have to say is displayed through behavior and not words.  We need to listen then too.

During the LEAD time assembly in the Cafe, my heart was racing and my stomach was in knots.  The new video and projector would not work.  Judy was hastily trying to help and the new technology that worked the day before was being uncooperative again.  Five minutes went by.  Ten minutes went by.  I began to introduce the video and talk about the 7 Habits.  The students were restless.  Few were raising their hands to participate and the answers they did give were flat and uninspiring.  I'm not going to lie.  I was mad and disappointed.

What I realized, however, was that I was not as mad at the students as I was at us.  If the students don't know the habits, that's on us.  If they don't want leadership roles, that's on us.  It's our job to teach, model, and inspire our students.  That's a hard job.  I feel the difficulty and stress of that lately too.

I'm placing an article about increasing student voice in mailboxes this week from Principal magazine's January/February 2016 titled "Turn Up the Volume."  Please read it.  According to the article, "only 47 percent of students think they have a voice in decision-making at their school" and "only 52% of students believe teachers are willing to learn from them."  What would our students say?

The last paragraph of the article resonated with me.  Authors Quaglia and Corso state, "After all the emails have been sent, all the data poured over, all the central office meetings attended, and all the paperwork filled out, you may wonder why you became a principal.  Why you remain a principal is to make a difference for kids.  The bottom-line questions will not be about test scores or budgets or adequate yearly progress, but about whether you have listened to, learned from, and led with your students."  Are you with me?

Student Leaders at our Lighthouse Meeting

Big Rocks:
IOWA/CoGAT finished Friday.  We have to deliver them to Central Office on Monday.

I-Ready testing begins on Monday.  The window ends on Friday, February 19.  A big thank you to Robin for having both tests ready to go and a Google doc to sign up for lab time.

There have been some changes to the M-Step.  MDE is saying that the ELA and Math portions are computer adaptive this year.  Science and Social Studies are still fixed form tests.  There is a lot of changes with timing with more flexibility.  Schools can now determine the appropriate amount of time to spend in a single testing session.  A student can exit their test at any time and resume testing in another scheduled session at any time during the 3 week period.  A worrying new development is that recent legislation taking effect in the 2016-2017 school year requires students in grades K, 1, 2 to be administered assessments in ELA and Math.  I cannot make this stuff up.

Our PTA Leaders will be selling Anti-Bullying bracelets.  We will have an anti-bullying assembly with Rodney Page on Monday, March 7.  My daughters had this assembly at their school and couldn't stop talking about it.  Rodney is a talented musician that combines music, d.j, and motivational messages about bullying and finding your voice.

If you are looking for an easy dinner on Tuesday night, come and support Cooper and our PTA at the MOD Pizza fundraiser from 5:00-9:00.  You do need a flyer.  Those will be in your mailbox this week and are available as an attachment on the Peek of the Week.

Thank you to the Enthusiasm team for organizing the Soup Luncheon on Thursday.  It sounds delicious!

This is the last time to let us know if you are interested in attending the Michigan Reading Association Conference, The Leader in Me symposium, or the Teach Like a Pirate conference.  Let us know by Tuesday.  If we have too many people, we'll pick out of a hat.

The Friday Work Day is building optional for teachers.  Enjoy!!

Calendar for the Week of January 25, 2016:
Monday: IReady Testing Begins
               Drop off Iowa/CoGAT
               11:00 Noon Monitor Meeting
               11:15 Student Lighthouse
Tuesday: MOD Pizza Fundraiser 5:00-9:00
               3:45-5:00 Lighthouse Meeting

Wednesday: 11:15 PTA Leaders
                     8:00-11:00 Data Analysis Sessions at Riley

Thursday: 8:00 Staff Meeting
                 8:00-12:00 M-Step meeting C.O. (Sarah and Kristi)
                Soup Luncheon
                End of Marking Period

Friday: Teacher Work Day-Optional in Building
            LEAD PD 8:00-12:00 (Kristi and Sarah)

Saturday: Schoolcraft EdCamp








No comments:

Post a Comment