I am taking to my soap box as this is my blog. I taught in the public school for 33 years. Seeing a place of learning become a killing field is beyond comprehension...
My message is not necessarily that parents are important (we know this) but you must do what you can to get parents involved in your school. I would make phone calls, emails, hand out invitation to meet with me when I was a principal to parents as they dropped off and picked up their children, used message boards, etc. I would not stop “hounding parents” to get them involved with the school.
Briefly at one middle school where I was a principal our PTA over two years: saw our test...
As school safety is paramount on everyone’s mind, especially after what happened in Florida last week, making schools safer with additional and better security is always needed. I have read statistics that there is a campus shooting once a week in America. When I was a principal, we were able to hire school security officers. These men and women were trained (but not deputized) by our district and did not carry weapons. They did wear uniforms so they were easily recognizable by the school...
Many assistant principals (although not all) want to be a principal. To be an assistant principal (AP) at any educational level is a very complex, demanding and difficult challenge and always underappreciated. So is the principalship! In most school districts they have three to four times the number of APs as principal’s so the numbers alone may mean that you might never become a principal. Here are some simple strategies that I hope will make those aspiration become reality!
The AP...
All senior educators are very concerned about the tremendous need for new and better principals. Different strategies are in place to fill vacancies in the principalship. Principals can be developed from the existing ranks of educators, hired from outside the education field or through a combination of both. To meet the immediate needs, most school districts want to grow their own principals. Many districts will hire from outside their districts but there can be a learning curve involved....
Dr. Shipley hears the school bell ring and knows that the children will be entering the classroom soon. Everything is set up, organized, and ready for the day. The room is spacious and quiet, but any minute it will be busy and inhabited by the community members that live there each day. Daily procedures are taught from day one and continue throughout the entire school year. Students know what to expect and what...
Examine any standard lesson plan template and you’ll likely to see the same categories and domains: standards, learning objectives, step-by-step plans, accommodations for various student populations, assessment, etc.
Lesson-planning is fundamental to teaching. Working from a well-thought-out plan (while it might and probably should change as you teach and gain more knowledge of your students) is a sound strategy. Some teachers use spartan plans while others utilize long, scripted out...
Do your students struggle with written or oral expression? Imagine bringing writing to life so every learning style is engaged, enriched, encouraged and expressed. What if writing is more than scratching the surface of a paper with the narrow tip of a pencil, but embellished with the broad strokes of a brush &...