interviews, interviews, interviews

Today I sat in on screening interviews for our district.  Administrative candidates were invited to be interviewed and if they do well, they will be put into an administrative pool for schools to draw from if they are needing to replace an administrator who is retiring or transferring.  Made me think about my own skills as an administrator.

I’m not sure I would have survived the interview process.  I had some experience, but I’m not sure I would have made it through this grueling, winnowing process.   And what do you really look for when looking to hire an administrator?

For me, I like to see candidates who are familiar with instructional leadership.  What are best practices in the classroom?  Do you know reading and math intervention strategies that have been proven to increase student achievement?  What about data?  Do you look at it and involve data in your decisions?  And we have a focus on site based decision making in our district.  So I like to see if the candidate is involving the entire school community on important decisions.  Are they getting feedback  and buy in when working with teachers to make change?  Just telling teachers what to do isn’t considered an effective change strategy in our district.

I sure was glad I wasn’t interviewing today.  Although I was exhausted from sitting all day.  It seems to be much more relaxing to be walking around my building talking to teachers and kids.

Mini-breakdown

You know, to be a good administrator, you have to find that balance between too much work and doing and visiting classrooms and talking to parents and too much hanging out in your office hiding.   I don’t think I’ve got it figured out, but I swung dramatically back to my office to hide these past few weeks.  We are still having our collaborative meetings and I’m still stepping into classrooms, but I was starting to smoke from the burn out.

We had a parent night talking about teaching kids good hygiene.  We had two late nights for parent teacher conferences.  We had a presentation to the school board about what we are doing well and what we need to work on. We have the new school improvement plan to do and staffing changes to content with because we are losing a staff.  And the little things like we lost two assistants and had to shuffle responsibilities and another had health issues and needed us to take her to the hospital (we don’t mess with chest pains).

In my personal world I’ve had to travel a bit on the weekends when I normally rejuvenate or veg or whatever I needed to do that I wasn’t able to do because I was traveling.  And it started to pile up.  And I knew I was past the breaking point of the mini-breakdown when I struggled to keep a supportive happy face when helping a mom who was missing her daughter.

It turned out OK like it usually does where the daughter had gone to a friend’s house when the mom was late picking her up.  Nonetheless I just wanted to go home and I didn’t want to help this mom call the homes of classmates to see where her daughter had gone and then have the possibility of having the police come to file a missing person report.  And when the daughter was found, there were tears of gratitude and it became clear how very worried this mom had actually been and I hadn’t really even noticed because I just wanted to go home.

So, I’ve consciously been hiding in my office a bit. When the district wanted to deny my request to pay for meals for our teaching staff when the parent conferences went past 8:00 pm, I was ready to find a new job.  Even a few tears of frustration and on one particularly stressful day, I just went to this private bathroom, locked myself in for four minutes, and took deep breaths and reminded myself of all the wonderful things about my job that I love.

I’m better now.  And I have some energy to write in the blog again.  Thanks for giving me this little vacation from writing.  Nothing is more important to me than remaining present and ready for my staff, my students,  and…me and my family.   I believe it is possible to find that balance between all of the demands.  But, when I tipped too much to the school demands, I needed to swing back into my personal world and gas up.

What are you doing to fill your cup?

Surplus Teachers

It came to my attention that there was a teacher job listed in a nearby district.  The school is in a medium sized urban area hard hit by the economics.  Even when this area was doing well, it wasn’t the first place teachers were looking to work.  In fact, the district has had a difficult time gaining some respectability.    But, I talked with a woman who is trying to get a teaching job.  She contacted this school to apply and was told 28 certified teachers had applied within the first few days.  Wow.  This is a place that was begging for teachers.  And, often the teachers would stay and move on when they could because the schools are a bit run down, the kids are poorer than most, and there has been lots of leadership changes resulting in a lack of focus.

How did the glut of teachers get to be so big so fast?  I noticed it when I was interviewing for teachers in August this past year.  Usually in August I am seeing candidates who have been turned down by other schools and they are still out there interviewing and looking for positions.  Of this last minute interviewing I had to do in August, usually I need to interview five or six candidates before I get a warm body I would even consider for a one year only position.  But, since I only have a few weeks before school starts, I might seriously consider that warm body.  However, this past August, I could have hired almost all of the candidates.  I was so surprised with the high caliber of candidates.  New teachers eager to begin their career still looking for a position.  Seasoned veterans who had moved into the area.  Teachers with lots of endorsements and experience, but no contract.  So, I’m thinking about that principal in this neighboring district who has 28 applicants for a mid-year opening and I’m thinking he has a great pool to choose from.

Another nearby district just listed 500 people are going to be laid off, 250 of them are teachers.  Each classroom will grow by 3 or 4 students.  My personal building?  We are losing one staff member and it is always difficult.  And I’m assuming we are going to have about a 15% cut in funds as well.  Where will these cuts come from?  We don’t have too many programs that can absorb that percentage of cuts.  It will result in cuts in people and positions.  I just laid off an assistant this week and I’m going to have to cut back on hours for a few other assistants.  It’s hard.  Senior mamas are holding onto their position and putting off retirement because their 401ks still look grim and they are afraid to not have their job.  How long will this glut last?  And it it just local, or is it something that has been noticed nation wide?

Girl’s arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance – CNN.com

Girl’s arrest for doodling raises concerns about zero tolerance – CNN.com.

I’m not sure exactly where I stand on this, but it isn’t completely on one side or the other.  I can see zero tolerance and absolutes usually backfire at some point.  It doesn’t seem to take into consideration student needs and situations.

However, I’m thinking of situations here at our school where police involvement was important.  In one case, we filed charges on an incident we normally wouldn’t involve police, but we chose to file charges because we had official tracking of student problems.  The parents seemed unwilling to receive support from us and they were not recognizing that their child was struggling in school with behavior issues.  Moving it into the court system allowed other agencies to begin providing services for this family and this child eventually ended in a facility giving him mental health services as well as structures to improve his school behavior.  He is much more successful now, it seems.  To some, we would have seemed intolerant.  But, our final goal was to get help for a student we were worried about.  Without the parental support, the courts helped us gather up help in other ways.

Maturation

This year’s maturation presentation has come.  Boys in one room.  Girls in another room.   They still show slides that talk about changes in the body.  They talk about puberty and how that affects kids and how they will become adults after puberty is over.  They talk about how they will never be this short again and what is a maxi pad.  It’s all good I guess.  But somewhat superficial.

I’m a bit subdued knowing that two child protective service workers have come this week specifically to interview girls who have recently been sexually molested.  One father figure confessed even before the girl was ready to talk.  Another girl appears to be in a bit of competition with her mom for the boyfriend’s attention.  Unfortunately she won.

How are we helping these kids?  I’m not sure the slide shows  are doing the trick, and unfortunately most of these slide shows are coming too late.  As I look across the array of faces, we have suspicions as many as 14 kids are sexually active and they have yet to celebrate their 14th birthday.

Too bad about that loss of innocence and too bad we don’t do a great job of giving kids a safe place to talk.  The intentions of the slide show presenters are good, but insufficient to really make change.  And, unfortunately for some, it is too late.

So Proud

I know I have pretty much nothing to do with it, but today a teacher made me so proud.  So I guess I’m proud because we hired her.  And I guess we’re proud because she’s part of the family so to speak.

Today we had a whole bunch of principals crowd into a teacher’s classroom and observe her teach a math lesson.  In doing that, we principals were learning more about what to watch for in a math lesson.  This teacher agreed to let us all come and hover around the edges of her room and watch her and her students interact as she introduced a lesson on telling time.

She was more amazing and on top of her game than I have seen on my previous observations.  I’m not saying she wasn’t wonderful on those observations, because she has been wonderful when I’ve come to visit.  But she was REALLY wonderful today.  Her kids were with her almost entirely.  They responded well to her questions and provided us with excellent math talk examples.  They supported each other and helped each other.  They worked in small groups and worked as a small class.  She randomly selected kids to lead the class in lessons and they followed her lead through a pretty full lesson.

The objectives the math program had set up for this “mini lesson” were pretty hefty for the students.  Maybe as we gain traction on this math program students will come with more background knowledge and the objectives won’t seem so daunting.

Today’s chuckle?  When the teacher asked the class to consider the differences between a.m. and p.m.  She asked them what they would do at 10:00 a.m. (school) and 10:00 p.m. (sleep).  But, she didn’t get the answer sleep.  What does one student do at 10:00 p.m.?  Play video games.

Teacher Evaluation

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I don’t like our teacher evaluation program.  It is too vague and there is too much room for us principals to make things up as we go.  We mean well, but I don’t know if we understand the vision the original authors had.

I spent most of the day today working with provisional teachers.  These are teachers in their first three years of working with our district.  Many have multiple years working in other locations, but they must work to gain tenure in our district.  I am scheduled to meet with these new teachers at certain intervals and there are rules.  I must meet with these non-tenured teachers within a certain time period for the initial explanation of the evalauation process.  Then there must be no more than 20 days and I am supposed to meet with them again regarding their first informal or formal conference.  At least 20 days must pass before I meet with them again and I can’t have more than 5 days pass for the follow-up meeting of the first conference.  I am to document the pre-observation meeting, the observation date, and the post-observation follow-up meeting.  The teacher meanwhile also has to work on collecting data to showcase to me their extraordinary teaching abilities and they can choose among these data sources or they can create their own but they must at least use this one certain data source because all non-tenured teachers must use this one data source.

The piece that seems unclear is the ambiguity around formal and informal observations. What’s the difference?  If I write my notes down on this form will that make it more formal?  Is this check off sheet to be used after each formal observation, informal observation, or is it an end of year form to use.  Do I only use it if I have concerns about an individual?  And about those data sources.  What if a teacher has a goal and they don’t reach their goal based on the data they collected?  Do they get a failing grade because they didn’t make the grade or do they get passing for having tried and they successfully documented their failure?

I don’t know the answer.  I’m not a big fan of checkoff lists, but it is succinct and clean and easy to document.  The multiple facets of our system is driving me nuts and feels mostly like a nighttime walk through a thick cornfield.

What is possible

I recently attended a seminar that included a keynote by Dr. Joseph F. Johnson, Jr., the Executive Director of NCUST (National Center for Urban School Transformation).  He had some great things to say and I felt he had experience with what he was talking about.  Have you ever been to a conference where you feel like you are having a textbook read to you?  Part of this conference was like that.  But, Dr. Joseph F. Johnson, Jr. was not.  There was an additional breakout group with him for question and answer time.  He didn’t give the “party” answer.  He talked about how mastery is important and how kids need that sense of mastery in order to feel some success.  But, the question remains.  How do you fit in all the core curriculum that the state is expecting and still get mastery.  Especially if you are starting from behind?

I’ve been doing a math intervention group with 5th graders.  This group had three days to learn add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators.  So, we have to master all of the steps to complete this process.  As a group we agreed you have to find equivalent fractions first that share a common denominator.  Second, we need to add or subtract, whatever the problem requires.  Third, we need to change back the fraction in the answer to a proper fraction if it is an improper fraction, and fourth, we may need to simplify the fraction.  Well, for one of the kids we are still stuck on finding equivalent fractions.  For a few others we are stuck on changing back improper fractions.  And a few others still are not able to simplify.

The point of the story is that students feel like they are living in the middle of a storm and everyone is rushing, rushing, rushing.  They never fully get a grasp of what it is we are doing to hold back the storm because the winds keep blowing and there is another lesson, another crisis, another way in which they don’t understand what is going on.   We need to take stock in what those pacing maps are asking of us and pick out the absolute necessities we need to learn and master.  What are the pieces required to keep the house standing.  Once we know the framing is in place and is not in danger of collapse, then we can add the remaining pieces.  We can’t keep running from crisis to crisis, lesson to lesson, bit by bit until we know what pieces are crucial for a more global understanding.

I know this isn’t what the district wants.  I know this isn’t what the state wants.  But how can we get kids to make any gains if we move on without master?

Team Meetings

Still trying to get a focus on team meetings.  We are creeping forward, but I found this link to Mike Schmoker’s team norms which outline how to spend this time.   This is Mike here.  Doesn’t he look positive, like “we can do this” kind of guy?

I think we can do this, and I’m trying to focus on the steps we need to take to bring the conversation to a higher level.  To keep raising the bar about how do we teach our lessons and what do we agree on in our lessons that will bring about student success?  So much I need to know.  So much I need to understand about motivation and tracking and support and encouraging.

Do you think school change has to be grueling?  Is it true that to make the changes necessary to get to 80% or more, we must suffer?   Really?  However, it seems that at the places where big change seems to be happening, there is a bunch of grumbling and a bunch of unhappy teachers.  Why?  Is the correlation between teacher unhappiness and student achievement such that we can’t have achievement without the unhappiness?  I don’t want to believe that. I want to think that teachers really do want to see their kids reading better and performing in math and that they would be thrilled to see kids progress.  I haven’t seen actual schools where the teachers have been pushed into change (which resulted in some great increases in test scores)  and they were happy to be teaching.  Can change happen and can we get teachers to  embrace this change on their own without bullying them?

We talked about Teaching!

OK.  OK.  I know this shouldn’t be such a big deal, but I felt like we were on the right track today with one of our collaborative grade level meetings.  This grade came together for our collaborative meeting with their focus of increasing comprehension skills.  The team had agreed to work on a similar assessment that asked students to read a text and answer five questions and write the answer to a 6th question.  The teachers had interesting insights!  We even talked about teaching and our most senior teacher offered up suggestions about how to teach students the difficult skill of inferring information.  The other teachers were offering up information. We role played it and talked more about the specifics of teaching.  I begged the teacher to let us come and observe her in action so we could continue the conversation, and it was fun!  Imagine.  A collaborative meeting where people aren’t just grumpy because I’m making them meet.  People were engaged. They were animated.  They were certainly a bit discouraged (not one kid was able to get 100%), but the teachers were also hopeful as they identified ways to make it different next time.  It gives me a little glimmer of hope that we can get focused on the core and on how to get kids to understand the essential elements of what they will face in end of year testing. 

What a geek I am, I can see that.  But this could be the beginning of the end.  I know our students can be successful on end of year tests.  I know it.  I feel it and I can see it when I watch kids working and reading and growing in our Reading Promise program.

80% or more.