SOUP TALK
VOLUME 2 Friday, NOVEMBER 20, 2017
Be a Learning Leader
Why are you a leader? Because your students, your parents, your colleagues, and your administrator is counting on you to do your best to lead your students to success. Leading at all levels is difficult for many reasons; mostly, due to the many variables we all face day to day. Being a leader is a great challenge.
How should I lead? Each of us will have a different answer to that question due to the role we play and the people we lead. However, leadership is about working together, collaboratively, in order to set and achieve goals that we believe in accomplishing. When we work together to understand the why of our leaderhship the work load seems to be lighter.
Leadership needs to identify the goals for individuals as well as the groups we lead. By looking at our challenges we will plan together how we will achieve our successes. It is imperative that we identify and agree on what the "right work" is in order to lead. As a leader we must think about change in terms of how it will impact ourselves as well as those we lead. It is important to be able to have a different way of thinking about how we hold ourselves individually and collectively responsible for our leadership so we can move our work forward towards achieving our successes.
There are two pieces of research that speaks to leadership and being able to move forward towards success. It is found in an old term, the "Knowing-Doing-Gap." (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000) What is the Knowing - Doing - Gap? It is when administrators and teachers give lip service to the research of best practices but don't act on it in the classroom or building. Chris Argyris puts it this way: the Knowing - Doing - Gap is about the difference between people's "espoused theory" of action - What people say they believe versus the "Theory in use" - what people really act like.
There are only two kinds of schools and school districts....Improving and Not Improving. It will take all of us leading each day to continue on the improvement path we are currently on in our classrooms, buildings and as a district. I need YOUR leadership as a collaborative team as we work towards improving our district from all levels. I know we are, we can continue, and we will improve the teaching and learning in our district because I am counting on each of us to be a leader.
OPPORTUNITY TO SHINE!!
Clarenceville High School: The Clarenceville High School math PLC of Trevor Johnson, Alan Kantor, Mike Laschober, David Lurie, Vince Marsico, and Mackenzie Verbridge for their commitment to student success and student learning. The CHS Math PLC has worked collaboratively to plan, prepare, and teach 2 sections of Algebra, 2 sections of Geometry and 1 section of Algebra 2 so that quality instructional time was not lost as we began the year without a certified math teacher for one classroom. Their Trojan P.R.I.D.E. and passion for helping students shone brightly throughout Clarenceville HS truly making every day a great day to be a Clarenceville Trojan! Thank you for your commitment to our students!
Grandview Elementary: Lisa Piontek: Received a $1,000 grant for books for the Non-Fiction book club she facilitates with students during select lunch and recess times. Lisa also just passed her Reading Specialist certification; a two hour test consisting of 80 selected response questions, 1 constructed response, and 1 case study! Way to model Growth Mindset for our Mustangs and provide them with enriching activities.
The Clarenceville Education Foundation would like to congratulate the following grant recipients: Cindi Gibson & Stefan Terpack ($4550 award) and Patti Dunnabeck-Green ($6400 award). The CEF hopes these awards will make a difference for our kids and they look forward to reviewing the next round of grants that are submitted. The CEF's next Board of Directors' meeting is scheduled for Monday, December 11th. Any grants properly submitted by that date will be reviewed. Let the ideas flow and put it in a grant request!!
Clarenceville School District
ALL MEANS ALL!
Email: Paul.Shepich@clarencevilleschools.org
Website: www.clarencevilleschools.org
Location: 20210 Middlebelt Road, Livonia, MI, United States
Phone: 248-919-0400
Facebook: www.facebook.com/clarencevilleschooldistrict
Twitter: @CvilleSupe