Transformative Principal

Kara is an assistant principal at Edwin Lowe Elementary in New Town North Dakota. Grew up Cheyenne-Sioux South Dakota. Foster education. Emancipated as a young adult. Knew what it took to survive in life. Dropped out of High School. Started school again in her 20s. Life on the reservation due to socio-economic and other issues. She saw the world starting to pass her by. Writing a paragraph sounds so simple to most people, but it is very difficult if you haven’t done it in 14 years. Working on a Doctorate. So much to give back now to others. No student cannot succeed when they have the resources to be successful. Uncle was a good mentor. Making connections instructors. Not being afraid to ask questions that were on my mind. Most people want to help others. You have to be open to saying “I don’t know” You have to be reflective. Be reflective in your successes. Need to relax, slow down, and wait for things to happen. Felt drawn back to the reservation. Groomed to teach in Bismarck, but felt that working on a re

Teacher-led Professional Development with Nathan Adams Transformative Principal 107 Nathan has been a special education teacher for 8 years. He has taught in middle, high, and elementary levels. Teacher led professional development Sponsored by the local teacher’s union. Joined the union that has supported him, in an effort to give back. Idea of helping general education teachers and special education teachers understand the needs of each other. Brotherhood of professionals. Need to find a way to offer this for credit to improve skills but also have incentive. NEA grant that supported professional development for teachers teaching teachers. Institute for Professional Development. Will align in the future to make the district PD calendar aligned with what the association is wanting. Surveyed members to determine what they wanted to learn. This is a perk/benefit for the members of the association. Challenge is finding the time to make this happen. Highlights: Teachers posted what they found beneficial from the

Kristin Bentley is a 2nd grade teacher in a Title I school. She created an awesome app that helps manage classroom behavior: Color My Day Introductory Video Why use this rather than Class Dojo. Think Time forms and Office Discipline Referrals are built-in to the app. Shoutout to Tricia Skyles ODRs going down means nothing if teacher morale is going up. The process of creating an app from the ground up. Crayons and paper Lucidchart Found a graphic designer. Found a programmer. Tell people about your ideas, find out what people are looking for in their schools. Do something to make people’92s lives easier. Make sure it is not something extra for teachers or admins to implement. Need 3 people: Expert, designer, and developer. Three ways to get it off the ground: pay someone, find someone to buy into your vision, find investors. Planbook Support teachers who are building apps to support students. Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Ready for a Modern Web Site for your

Kristin Bentley is a 2nd grade teacher in a Title I school. She created an awesome app that helps manage classroom behavior: Color My Day [Introductory Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4IrMJpInOk&feature=youtu.be) Using card pulls is not very effective. Clip charts use separate clips to show that positive and negative behavior. The two clips gave the ’93naughty’94 kids a chance to have a good day. Goal for card pulls is to stay positive. Card pulls don’92t give chances for kids to see what they can accomplish. Clips change kids self-esteem. Physical chart helps kids see and experience changes. Digital version allows teachers to collect and analyze data. Think Time form allows student to fill out the form with teacher and record it in the app. Data is collected school-wide and allows teachers to customize their individual reasons for clips up and down. Digital version of clip chart allows teachers to have data to collect and prepare for RTI, special ed referrals, and more. The app keeps track of

Principal of South Heights Elementary in his 20th year. Rob doesn’t just look at his students currently, he has a much bigger vision of what they can accomplish and how they can make life better forever. Rob keeps in contact with kids who went to The 1199 many years ago and makes sure that they can still find ways to be successful. Special things you do during Christmas for your schools You can be an awesome combination of tradition and innovation. We celebrate all of our holidays. We take all of our kids to a movie. Santa’s Treasure Island Mall! Most schools going away from all this extra stuff, and it seems you are going toward it full steam ahead! Work hard, play hard, succeed! Neighborhood Christmas parade. Go big or go home. How has the community changed since you’ve been doing these things? This school not prison, so let’s make it enjoyable. Big ideas are going to happen. People are willing to go out and make it happen. People are willing to come in and do extra as well. Expensive endeavors require the

Rob Carroll Principal of South Heights Elementary in his 20th year. Rob doesn’t just look at his students currently, he has a much bigger vision of what they can accomplish and how they can make life better forever. Rob keeps in contact with kids who went to The 1199 many years ago and makes sure that they can still find ways to be successful. Man cave show on home and garden channel gave them at Own version of Harlem Children’s Zone Timeline of success milestone From conception to career, how does every child succeed. Not just a K–5 school. We help them after they move on. Help them in high school. Help them for college applications. We really love our students. Circle of life sustains change. 11 years of doing college tours. Kids had an unrealistic expectation of college. K goes to local community college Each grade goes to a different college. Our 5th graders understand more about college than a lot of juniors and seniors. If it’s good enough for my biological kids, it’s good enou

Brian Costello is in his 7th year of teaching in Southern New Jersey.  Brian started his career as an instructional aide before going on to teach Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grades.  He is an avid writer, blogger, and Twitter user that has published his first children’s novel: Will McGill and the Magic Hat.  Brian speaks at Educational conferences on topics including educational technology, leadership, communication, and professional development.  See Brian’s previous posts for CUE.   Here is what we talked about today: Will McGill and the Magic Hat Independent Publisher CUE blog Classroom Community World Tour - helping kids see what happens in other places. Tour Builder - “Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you’ve visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation.” The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds You use this to show students what life is like in another place. Twi

Brian Costello is in his 7th year of teaching in Southern New Jersey.  Brian started his career as an instructional aide before going on to teach Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grades.  He is an avid writer, blogger, and Twitter user that has published his first children’s novel: Will McGill and the Magic Hat.  Brian speaks at Educational conferences on topics including educational technology, leadership, communication, and professional development.  See Brian’s previous posts for CUE.   Here is what we talked about today: Working with the youngest kids provides you with some things that start to disappear as they get older. The light bulbs go off way more than when they are older. Rotating through content areas 1–4th grades. Give teachers a chance to focus more on a content area. Can be more difficult to build relationships with students. Works together with other teachers more on because of their transitions. How to deal with mean teachers. Confront them directly. State the appropriate professional response. H

Today, Damon Hargraves, host of the WorkflowED podcast turned the mic on me and interviewed me for the 100th episode of the Transformative Principal Podcast. I can’t believe I have done 100 episodes of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this and helping me make it better. RTI idea was in place, but we needed a little kick in the pants. Value of getting away from the day-to-day issues at school. How to keep it going when you come back from conferences: hang up the poster. Reducing ELA from 90 minutes per day to 45 minutes per day, with students who need 90 minutes still getting that much time. How to get teachers to agree to reduce the number of minutes for their content area. Yolanda Westerberg We can always be better, so let’s always improve. There is a story written before you. Accept the story that has been there before your chapter 1 starts. How to have solid forward momentum as you make changes, and not get stalled. Meeting with the correct people so you don’t get stalled. Getting feedback

Overview:  Woodson has been an all-day everyday Kindergarten Center for the past 11 years.  In the past 4 years enrollment has fluctuated between 360–425 students (currently about 385 with our preschool class).  51% of our students are students of color, and we have a 61% free and reduced lunch student population.  We have 16 sections of kindergarten this year–13 on the traditional school calendar and 3 on the modified (year long) calendar as they feed into the modified calendar elementary school.  We have been a PBIS school for the past 5 years and this year we were award a “School of Excellence” award by the State Department for our work in established strong tier one behavioral supports for all students.  This year we have implemented a behavior specialist position as well as being the second year in our bi-linguage reading pilot in which we have a spanish speaking paraprofessional front loading reading instruction in home languages of a sub section of our EL students.  Last year we tried a new venue for P

Doug Timm is the principal of Carrie Downie Elementary School First principalship - innovative technology, focus on standards. Modern Teacher, Instructional Rounds. Cognitive growth targets (Bloom’s taxonomy) Think beyond comprehension and recall. What is the teacher doing and assigning? 6 different centers, but all 6 focused on retrieving and comprehending. How can we focus on more than the two basic levels? Charlotte’s Web in the city takes it up a level. Not all we are looking at, but major focus on tasks. I need to change what I am asking them to do to get them where I want them to be. Importance of how kids think. Why we need to make sure our kids are thinking beyond comprehending. Have to practice those skills. I don’t make inferences in observations anymore. Talk to kids during the observation. Sitting at a desk with the kids. Coaches (2) and Doug are assigned to teachers Teacher Name, Task, Where it falls in blooms taxonomy. What can you do to be a transformative principal? Walk around the building a

Amy Locke graduated from the University of North Florida with a BA in Special Education: Deaf Studies and an M.Ed in Special Education: Deaf Education. She has been working in the field of Deaf Education for 7 years, beginning her career as an itinerant teacher for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in central Florida, then moving to Houston, TX to teach in a self-contained 3rd/4th grade class with DHH students. About 4 ½ years ago, she moved to Alabama to work as a reading teacher in the high school department at the Alabama School for the Deaf. In November 2014, she became the high school director. The Alabama School for the Deaf currently has 178 students from all around our state, all of whom have a documented hearing loss. We have two academic departments here: Elementary serves students from age 3 through 6th grade and the High School department serves students in grades 7–12. We are a residential program and a little more half of them live on campus in our dorms. The rest are day students living within

Amy Locke graduated from the University of North Florida with a BA in Special Education: Deaf Studies and an M.Ed in Special Education: Deaf Education. She has been working in the field of Deaf Education for 7 years, beginning her career as an itinerant teacher for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in central Florida, then moving to Houston, TX to teach in a self-contained 3rd/4th grade class with DHH students. About 4 ½ years ago, she moved to Alabama to work as a reading teacher in the high school department at the Alabama School for the Deaf. In November 2014, she became the high school director. The Alabama School for the Deaf currently has 178 students from all around our state, all of whom have a documented hearing loss. We have two academic departments here: Elementary serves students from age 3 through 6th grade and the High School department serves students in grades 7–12. We are a residential program and a little more half of them live on campus in our dorms. The rest are day students living within

John Hope Bryant came to Alaska for the Alaska Principals Conference. He spoke to us about how he hopes to inspire corporations to partner with schools to prepare our students for the future. I bought both of his books mentioned below. I am excited to read them.  John Hope Bryant on Twitter. Learn more about Operation Hope. Learn more about Global Dignity Day. John has two books out. The first is Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World. “Summary from the publisher: Aimed at a new generation of leaders and extremely relevant for today’s economic climate, Love Leadership outlines Bryant’s five laws of love-based leadership-Loss Creates Leaders (there can be no strength without legitimate suffering), Fear Fails (only respect and love leads to success), Love Makes Money (love is at the core of true wealth), Vulnerability is Power (when you open up to people they open up to you), and Giving is Getting (the more you offer to others, the more they will give back to you).” The second is How the Poo

Ashley:  Ashley teaches 3rd grade in Plymouth, Minnesota at Greenwood Elementary School. She received her undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education from Miami University in Ohio. She then completed her Masters of Arts in Education with an endorsement in   K - 8 writing from St. Mary University in Minnesota.  Jamie: Jamie enjoys seeing students complete learning independently. Jamie teaches 3rd grade at Greenwood Elementary School in Plymouth, Minnesota. She received her undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education from University of Iowa. She completed her Masters in Education from Hamline University in Minnesota.  Both Jamie and Ashley feel that learning should be meaningful and authentic for their students. PICE Learning is a new and improved way of teaching comprehension skills for our 21st century learners. The PICE approach gives students ownership in their learning while using the common core standards. Students are able to connect with each other and independently learn in our 21st century

  Just before the #AKPrincipals conference ended, I had a chance to catch up the minds behind it all, Mary McMahon and Rod Morrison. They did a great job planning the event and will do an even better job next year.      Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey We're so grateful to our sponsor AI Coach by Edthena. AI Coach enables your teachers to go through coaching cycles based on their own needs. The virtual coach guides teachers to reflect on their teaching, set a goal, and create an action plan… all based on gathering

Here is a little bonus episode with Principal Kafele. We talk about how to reach those that are hardest to reach. Principal Kafele spoke at the Alaska Principals conference in Anchorage on October 18th.  If this is your first time listening to Transformative Principal, please subscribe.    Loading… Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher.  Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal.   Sponsor: Sanebox Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey We're so grateful to our sponsor AI Coach by Edthena. AI Coach enables your teachers to go through coaching cycles based on their own needs. The virtual coach guides teachers to reflect on their

Jamie: Jamie enjoys seeing students complete learning independently. Jamie teaches 3rd grade at Greenwood Elementary School in Plymouth, Minnesota. She received her undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Education from University of Iowa. She completed her Masters in Education from Hamline University in Minnesota.  Both Jamie and Ashley feel that learning should be meaningful and authentic for their students. PICE Learning is a new and improved way of teaching comprehension skills for our 21st century learners. The PICE approach gives students ownership in their learning while using the common core standards. Students are able to connect with each other and independently learn in our 21st century. PICE Learning was developed by Ashley and Jamie, they wanted to connect students’ learning to skills that they will use everyday and in their future.  If you’d like more information check out: www.picelearning.com   Gives Students an opportunity to be engaged learners. Started as coteachers Not 1:1 - 3:1 or 4:1 En

Michael Shapiro is serving in his second year as the principal of Highland Tech Charter School in Anchorage School District. A recent transplant from the Chicago area, he previously served as principal of Shepard Middle School in Deerfield, Illinois for seven years, during which time the school earned a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Award. Prior to that he served as an assistant principal for five years in two different schools. Mr. Shapiro began his educational career as a computer applications teacher and director of instructional technology. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Administration and Supervision at Loyola University in Chicago. Highland Tech is a 6th–12th grade charter school that promotes personal mastery through student centered, individualized learning and varied assessment strategies. Student placement is based on academic ability, rather than chronological age, ensuring students are challenged each day. Students are encouraged to take an active role in their education and ma

Michael Shapiro is serving in his second year as the principal of Highland Tech Charter School in Anchorage School District. A recent transplant from the Chicago area, he previously served as principal of Shepard Middle School in Deerfield, Illinois for seven years, during which time the school earned a U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon Award. Prior to that he served as an assistant principal for five years in two different schools. Mr. Shapiro began his educational career as a computer applications teacher and director of instructional technology. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Administration and Supervision at Loyola University in Chicago. Highland Tech is a 6th–12th grade charter school that promotes personal mastery through student centered, individualized learning and varied assessment strategies. Student placement is based on academic ability, rather than chronological age, ensuring students are challenged each day. Students are encouraged to take an active role in their education and ma