Wandering Into Adventure

I'm in Phoenix, and I was completely lost today. There was a perfect storm of things that occurred to get me lost in a city that I have never been, but it happened. I don't like being lost, but there are times when it doesn't bother me. It wasn't as if I didn't have any water, or I was due to be somewhere, so I took it as an adventure.

There I was walking on Camelback Road in the middle of a residential neighborhood looking for a baseball stadium that was 100 blocks away. In the process though, I pulled an orange off of an orange tree along the road and ate it. I admired the beautiful grass that some people have in their yards. I thought about how great the warmth of the sun was, and how great it was to walk without pain after the marathon.

I think that many of our moments at school as principals could fit into this metaphor. Each day we wander off into a place of uncertainty, where we don't know the way, and it can be fun, exciting, and even a place for growth. Tomorrow will be more routine. We will do our presentation, go to a few sessions, and finish the day with friends, but when the memories are all sewn up for the weekend, it may be today that we remember because failure breeds memories, and failure breeds learning.

I hope that you have an opportunity to just go and wander into something unplanned, and I hope that it doesn't go perfect, so that an adventure will be made for you to remember.

On The Road

There is nothing like walking through classrooms, talking with teachers, and hanging with students in the lunchroom to get a feel for the climate and needs of a building. Being a principal is a people intensive journey. It means phone calls, messages, smiles, and a listening ear. Without these tools, we are just managers of the education industrial complex.

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to lead from the road. It wasn't the same, but it was still highly effective. I had a video chat with a teacher that I am presenting with on Friday. I talked to two teachers candidates on my cell phone after texting them to get a return phone call. I answered a number of e-mails using my Blackberry. I even had time to read two articles on effective reading strategies (one that I sent to my wife for use with my five year old daughter). Finally, I met with our technology guru about our vision for the next 18 months and created a Google doc so it can be shared with others.

Even though I will be in Phoenix the next four days, it will be nice not to return to a huge pile of work that in the past would have gathered during time away from the building. Certainly, the time that I spend with people is key to the success of my school, but an absence isn't what it used to be. Once the final touches are on our presentation for @NASSP10, I will post for everyone. The presentation outlines our journey with standards-based grading.

See ya next week. Chat with you 24-hours a day from anywhere in the world.

Making the Call

One of the things about being a principal that never gets easier is calling teachers that didn't get a job in your school. There is no doubt that, for at least that moment, you have sucked the positive energy that they have for serving student right out of them. You can hear the vacuum on the other end of the phone, and I always pray that the action is temporary as we need every educator full of life and vigor in our journey to find success for kids. Unfortunately, I have many more of these calls to make in the next few weeks as hiring season is in full swing. I'll be taking a break from hiring later this week to head to Phoenix for the NASSP conference. Live blogging from Phoenix later in the week or follow me @ideaguy42 on Twitter for other highlights from the conference.

Spring is in the Air

Every year around March 1 a new element enters the middle school landscape. It is the final group of eighth graders that are going to figure out the concept of middle school relationships. It is cute, drama-filled, and predictable.

Let me paint the picture. For three years, there have been two single-gendered tables in the cafeteria side-by-side with zero, I mean zero interaction between the boys and girls. Many of these students have band and accelerated math together, but it was as if the Berlin Wall existed between their tables. Suddenly, March 1 arrives, and it is like new children have hatched. The giggle volume increases. The food gets tossed on the other table. The looks and whispers are obvious. Young love is in the air. Many of these kids will look back at March 1 of their eighth grade year and remember the name of the first person that they held hands with, attempted to say loving things to, and possibly even a first kiss.

By the way, dealing with all of this is the easy part. The hard part is keeping them focused on learning, representing our school well through testing, and preparing them to take on the high school. I'm glad that spring has arrived.

10 Years as an Assistant Principal

I have having one of those morning that feels like the quiet before the storm, and it has given me some time to think, catch up on some reading, and reflect on ten years as an assistant principal. I have no way of measuring or figuring out how many discipline conversations that I have had in a decade. Yesterday was a heavy day, and I talked to 30 students about a variety of things big and small, but my biggest revelation of the week is that I have supervised over 5000 lunch periods. All of them had more than 150 students and some had 300 plus students. It is an amazing number, and it climbs again at 11:11 a.m. this morning.

Three Thoughts

1. Today is the first day of interviewing for science candidates. I'm excited for the people sitting on both sides of the table. It is always tough to sit in front of ten people and put your best foot forward, but these experiences begin to shape your foundation as a teacher and learner. Candidates get to articulate what really matters to them and showcase their passion, two beautiful things about living in a democracy. On the other side, it is exciting to meet a new teammate for the first time and think about how this person can help you grow and be value added to the school. The pressure on this side comes from knowing that you could be making a one million dollar decision. (If a teacher stays for 20-30 years, then the outlay in salary and benefits is well over a million dollars.)

2. I read this NY Times article earlier in the week about touch and its importance to teacher/student interaction.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html?em
The article was oddly counter-intuitive. I know the power of touch. I know that it is easy to goof this up in a school setting, but I do believe that we have to try to allow the power of touch to out way our fears.

3. Malcolm Gladwell talks about how it take 10,000 hours at a minimum to become an "expert" at something. Even if you count student teaching and teachers working 10 hours a day, every day of their first years of teaching, it would almost be Christmas of a teacher's third year before kids would have someone working with them at this "expert" level. Not sure what to do with this thought, but it probably means greater amounts of hands-on experience is essential at the college level. It also traps new teachers in the struggle about how to get experience teaching, if everyone only hires people with experience.

Laser-like Focus

After having almost a year to think about what I want to be at the true core of my work as a principal, I am ready to roll it out.

Parallel Thought: Part of what I am sure that you will learn about me through this blog is my philosophy about the truth. I have a humble respect for the truth as I believe that none of us have a large enough perspective about life to actually know the truth about anything, but our role on the earth is to pursue truth through learning each day, so what I know today won't be as good as what I know tomorrow, but I going to make my foundation as strong as I can without placing my head in the sand to add a leg to the foundation.

I have decided to make my shift to the principalship on a DIME.

1. Do no harm...
Every place that you enter new has a tradition and history that is filled with excellent structures, ideas and people, and the worst thing that I could do is take actions that stops the positive momentum. This doesn't mean been inactive, quiet, or passive, but it means having the respect for progress, growth, and hard work that has come before me.

2. Innovation is king...
It is no longer an option to have a school with teachers or students that aren't risk-takers and innovators. Our creativity, design-thinking, and big picture sense will be the tie-breakers in a world of great competition. Every new idea must be explored, cultivated, and encouraged as it relates to teachers helping kids grow. This doesn't mean lack of focus, but it means channeled, doable continuous growth.

3. Mindset matters...
After reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, I am convinced that we must cultivate a growth mindset in all of our kids. This means that kids truly believe that their hard work with make them smarter, strengthen their brain, and open up new opportunities. The language of the growth mindset should filter through the hall. We have to have kids believe that frustration and failure lie at the beginning of every great success, and that we will support them through failure because we know that they just haven't gotten it, "YET"

4. Excellence is the only option...
Every aspect of what we do should be judged on whether excellence was a part of the input or excellence was the resulting output. It can't be good enough to have a good school. We have to work for a sense of excellence in our curriculum, instruction, assessment, grading, relationships, interactions with parents, public displays of learning, how we treat each other, and even how we do Monday mornings.

Help me grow...be part of my professional learning network. I know that I need each of you on this journey.