the RAH
September 12-16, 2016
from J-
We know collaboration is important in our work. So is planning time. To ensure you have a working knowledge and understanding of teacher plan time, I have placed a document in the Ele Leadership Canvas files page entitled Planning Time. You can review it by clicking here.
I do have one more section in the RAH, and felt the need to share it as a stand alone. I'm looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday at Leadership Team. Beyond see you all there, I will be visiting Bissett, Bowerman, Watkins & Williams. Have a great week!
Senior & Elementary Leadership Team
Wednesday, Sep 14, 2016, 08:30 AM
1359 East Saint Louis Street, Springfield, MO, United States
from Bret-
The next Delta Team meeting is set for Thursday, September 22nd. If you have agenda items, please get them to your feeder pattern representative.
I will be visiting Field, Sequiota, and Wilder next week.
Here is the link to the PTA Clothing Bank video should you want to share it with staff.
The EXPLORE! team began meeting this week to prepare for EXPLORE! 2017. We discussed preliminary customer feedback data, communication strategies, and meeting norms. As this work progresses, I will keep you informed via this newsletter, Delta team meetings, and Elementary Learning meetings.
One of my favorite school leadership quotes is by Tim Waters from McREL who said “The job of school level leadership is to ensure high within-school quality and low within-school variability in the quality of instruction for every student.” This article seems to underscore the importance of Waters’ quote.
Good to know-
- New pledge law: There is a new pledge of allegiance law going in effect. Our current board policy states--"Pursuant to state law, the Pledge of Allegiance will be recited in at least one scheduled class of every student no less than once a week. However, no student will be required to participate in the recitation." We will continue to follow this current policy and our current practice until the BOE approves a different policy. (Most sites recite daily, so this is a relative non-issue in SPS)
- Association dues and travel/conference funds: Like last year, each building will receive district monies to pay for association dues (MAESP, etc.) and travel costs to conference(s). Each leader (principals and assistant principals) will receive $300 for dues and $1000 for travel.
- We are catching rumor of some sites wanting to use iReady for a quartely assessment rather than the scheduled BOY, MOY, EOY (as approved by the Assessment Committee, which has a good share of teacher voice). Self-selecting to add to our over-assessment is not wise; please stick to the plan.
from J, part 2; Professional Dress: Is Professionalism in your Jeans?
As I ended last year, and started visiting this year, I'm observing staff and adults in jeans more regularly than I have in the past. What started as Jeans & staff shirt Friday has become jeans & throw-back Thursday (wearing your college gear), a jeans & ignite shirts on Wednesday (or whatever day your project team mtg is), a jeans & choice charity on Tuesday, and a jeans & school swag/bling day on Monday. By and large, what was once considered a novelty/special occasion has now become the norm.
Please look at the face value of this. You and your staff are professionals, and you want and expect to be treated as such. Does your dress represent that? Does your dress invite respect from and increase ability to influence your students? What does your appearance say to your parents? Do we invite society to treat us like professionals simply by the way we dress? We talk often of college and career readiness, and I wonder if we are modeling this in an appropriate manner for our students.
If I were a sitting building principal, I would be bringing this up, starting with my leadership team, and having the discussion about the need to raise our professional dress standards. And then I would be setting the expectation that jeans would be a Friday only deal, with the occasional (like once a month) special-cause, dress down opportunity.
Having said that, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just sharing what I have observed, and that is our educational professional dress appears to be on the decline. And for those who wish to connect with me to justify why this is happening more than one day a week, I'll share my response now: "You're the leader in the building; you set the expectation of what is appropriate."