This year as a district we have entered the realm of social media. We have a district Facebook page (www.facebook.com/mgsd70) and a district Twitter feed (@D70Super). We also have a newsletter that goes out to our entire community (not just our parents) three times a year with information about what is happening in the district. It is a three page newsletter with photos and plenty of “white space” with just a couple of key stories each time. Over the course of the year we have begun to tell our story of the great things going on District 70/Park View School.
A few times this year, I’ve been asked by staff and parents why we do this. I’ve always believed that it was important to share what was going on in the district in any way we can but I’ll admit, there have been times when I’ve wondered about the impact when we only have 223 people who have liked our Facebook page and our district Twitter account has 135 followers. A few things have happened recently that have re-energized our move in this direction.
Over the past couple weeks, the number of our staff who have joined Twitter and begun to use the tool to either share information about their classroom, connect with other professionals or extend opportunities for their students has increased from 3 or so to over 20! Many of them are just getting started but the fact is…they are getting started! It has been exciting to watch them start to explore. I’ve seen some tweet about professional articles they have found that they want to share, some tweet photos or videos of what students are doing in their classrooms and one who has been able to connect his students with the author of the book they are reading so his students can directly interact with him!
Here are the current District 70 staff who have joined Twitter:
Chris Kennelly - @MrKthirdgrade
Tracy Paskiewicz - @MrsPaskiewicz
Kelli Murphy - @Kmurphy3rd
PE Teachers - @PVPhysEd
Justine Reich - @reich116
Laura Matug - @pvkindermatug
Brian Hood - @pvpeteacher
Ivy Sukenik - @D70Principal
Kate Dougherty - @PVlibrary
Kat Harrison - @pvtechteacher
Brian Galuski - @brgalus
Paula Steil - @steil95
Terri Willis - @WillisK206
Christine Pellum - @cp2780
Julie Coyne - @JuliecoyneJulie
Elizabeth Schommer - @ElizabethSchomm
Marci Heymann - @MarciHeymann
Tari Rubenstein - @TariLRubenstein
Mindy Debes - @debes312
Sue Jonota - @PVMrsJ
Juli Wicinski - @JuliWicinski
Phil Collins - @D70Super (I use to share district happenings)
Phil Collins - @philc4115 (I use for my own professional learning and sharing)
I’ve also had the chance to read some of the work of Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal) and the thoughts of Tony Sinanis (@TonySinanis) about the importance of telling your school/district’s story and branding. I just bought Eric’s book “Digital Leadership” so I haven’t read it yet but I’ve seen a few excerpts from it and I can already tell it is powerful. Eric says “When we don’t tell our story, someone else will. When we don’t tell our story 9 out of 10 times it’s not the story we want told.”
I’m determined to not let someone else tell our story. WE will tell our story and share the great things that are happening in District 70/Park View School. We will continue to tell others about our use of social media so we can increase our likes and followers. We owe it to our students and staff to tell the story of the awesome work that they are doing!!
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Withdraw from the Common Core? What's all the fuss about?
Indiana made headlines this week with their decision to withdraw from the Common Core State Standards. Maybe I’m missing something but I just don’t get it. Why do so many people have an issue with the Common Core State Standards? As I’ve scanned a variety of articles, here is what I found.
Complaint #1 - WE didn’t write them, somebody else did. The somebody else was a group of teachers and standards experts. Also involved in the development process were the International Reading Association, the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. So maybe the teachers who were involved were different teachers than some would have chosen, but the reality is that teachers and national organizations focused on the subject areas of English language arts and mathematics were directly involved in the process.
Complaint #2 - The Feds are telling us what to do. Maybe to some extent they are but I ask the question…don’t our students deserve a common baseline of what they should know and be able to do? The “Feds” that started this initiative in the first place are the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Aren’t our chief state school officers charged with providing leadership at the state level for public education? Also, in the end, it was up to each state to decide whether to adopt the Common Core State Standards or not.
Complaint #3 - Our state standards are already more challenging. If this is truly the case, then it should be a breeze to incorporate the Common Core State Standards. I haven’t seen anything that indicates that states or school districts have to limit themselves to the Common Core. If your students are capable of more, then do it.
Complaint #4 - The Common Core State Standards are too hard. This may be true for some states and some districts. If it is true, isn’t this an indication that we should raise the bar for our students and push them to achieve more? The intent of the standards is to provide the stepping stones to help students be college and career ready. If our current standards aren’t rigorous enough to do that, then we need to raise the bar for our students.
Complaint #5 - The Common Core is telling me how to teach. The Common Core outlines what we students should know and be able to do. It helps define what students should but leaves the teaching (the how) to the teachers.
In the end, if you look at the content of the Common Core State Standards, I really don’t see a lot to argue with. In English language arts there is a significant focus on non-fiction reading and writing. The research from the 90-90-90 schools and many other sources support a focus on non-fiction as one of the most powerful ways to improve student performance. I would also argue that 90% or more of what we do as adults in whatever job we do involves some form of non-fiction reading and/or writing. Also, remember that the Common Core doesn’t throw literature out the window, but it does provide a more balanced approach.
In the article about Indiana withdrawing from the Common Core, there was an interesting addition at the end. The original author of the legislation, state Senator Scott Schneider, pulled his name from the bill late in the process. Apparently he objected to a component that other legislators added that required the state to still meet national education standards so they wouldn’t jeopardize federal funding. So, in the end, is what Indiana ends up with going to be that much different than the Common Core?
I don’t see the Common Core as evil. It is simply a recommendation of what students should know and be able to do in each grade level in English language arts and mathematics. Frankly, it is a better starting point and guide than we have had in the past. We still need to work with it at the local level to develop an understanding of Common Core, translate it into student friendly language, and determine how we are going to help students achieve the standards. That is our job as educators.
Complaint #1 - WE didn’t write them, somebody else did. The somebody else was a group of teachers and standards experts. Also involved in the development process were the International Reading Association, the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. So maybe the teachers who were involved were different teachers than some would have chosen, but the reality is that teachers and national organizations focused on the subject areas of English language arts and mathematics were directly involved in the process.
Complaint #2 - The Feds are telling us what to do. Maybe to some extent they are but I ask the question…don’t our students deserve a common baseline of what they should know and be able to do? The “Feds” that started this initiative in the first place are the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Aren’t our chief state school officers charged with providing leadership at the state level for public education? Also, in the end, it was up to each state to decide whether to adopt the Common Core State Standards or not.
Complaint #3 - Our state standards are already more challenging. If this is truly the case, then it should be a breeze to incorporate the Common Core State Standards. I haven’t seen anything that indicates that states or school districts have to limit themselves to the Common Core. If your students are capable of more, then do it.
Complaint #4 - The Common Core State Standards are too hard. This may be true for some states and some districts. If it is true, isn’t this an indication that we should raise the bar for our students and push them to achieve more? The intent of the standards is to provide the stepping stones to help students be college and career ready. If our current standards aren’t rigorous enough to do that, then we need to raise the bar for our students.
Complaint #5 - The Common Core is telling me how to teach. The Common Core outlines what we students should know and be able to do. It helps define what students should but leaves the teaching (the how) to the teachers.
In the end, if you look at the content of the Common Core State Standards, I really don’t see a lot to argue with. In English language arts there is a significant focus on non-fiction reading and writing. The research from the 90-90-90 schools and many other sources support a focus on non-fiction as one of the most powerful ways to improve student performance. I would also argue that 90% or more of what we do as adults in whatever job we do involves some form of non-fiction reading and/or writing. Also, remember that the Common Core doesn’t throw literature out the window, but it does provide a more balanced approach.
In the article about Indiana withdrawing from the Common Core, there was an interesting addition at the end. The original author of the legislation, state Senator Scott Schneider, pulled his name from the bill late in the process. Apparently he objected to a component that other legislators added that required the state to still meet national education standards so they wouldn’t jeopardize federal funding. So, in the end, is what Indiana ends up with going to be that much different than the Common Core?
I don’t see the Common Core as evil. It is simply a recommendation of what students should know and be able to do in each grade level in English language arts and mathematics. Frankly, it is a better starting point and guide than we have had in the past. We still need to work with it at the local level to develop an understanding of Common Core, translate it into student friendly language, and determine how we are going to help students achieve the standards. That is our job as educators.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Inventing the Future for Our Students
As superintendent of a one school K-8 school district, I have the advantage of seeing the entire continuum of our students’ experience all in one place. We recently began registration for our kindergarten students that we will welcome in August 2014. We are responsible for creating their educational experience that will help them be successful for not only the next nine years (K-8) but for the eight years (high school and college) or so of school that will follow that in addition to their life beyond that. We need to project what will their experience and their life be like 9 or 13 or 17 years from now and begin to prepare them for that. This is both exciting and scary at the same time.
At the same time, we are getting ready to send our 8th grade students off to high school. As we prepare to say goodbye to our 8th graders and welcome our new kindergarten students, I have been reflecting back to August 2005. That is when our current 8th graders started kindergarten. I did some digging to remind myself of how things were in 2005.
The bottom line is that when today’s 8th grade students started kindergarten, none of us would have predicted things as they are today. As I mentioned at the beginning, in August 2014, a new group of students will start kindergarten at Park View. It is our job as educators to prepare them for success in the future. We don’t know what that future will look like but it is safe to say that it will be continually changing. New tools and new opportunities are created every day. What it means for us as educators is that we need to continue to learn and grow and adapt to provide the best educational experience we can for our children. Years ago a colleague of mine gave me a pen for my desk with a quote by Alan Kay that says, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” We need to continuously work on improving what we do and inventing and reinventing the future for the sake of all of our children.
At the same time, we are getting ready to send our 8th grade students off to high school. As we prepare to say goodbye to our 8th graders and welcome our new kindergarten students, I have been reflecting back to August 2005. That is when our current 8th graders started kindergarten. I did some digging to remind myself of how things were in 2005.
- Did you know that four months before our 8th graders started kindergarten YouTube was launched? Did any of us predict at that point that by the time they graduated more than 1 billion unique users would visit YouTube…EACH MONTH! Who would have thought that the YouTube channel for the band One Direction would have over 12.6 million subscribers?
- iTunes was only selling music when they started kindergarten and made up a little over 4% of the music industry market. A quote from a November 21, 2005 article indicated "Apple Computer's iTunes music store now sells more music than Tower Records or Borders, according to analyst firm the NPD Group.” iTunes recently sold its 25 billionth song and has sold more than 1 billion TV episodes and 380 million movies. iTunes users are spending $1.75 billion a year on videos alone and iTunes accounts for $6.9 billion a year spent on digital music. In addition, the App store has hit over 50 billion downloads and Apple has paid out over $10 billion to developers.
- Facebook only had 5.5 million users. Today 1.184 billion people are on Facebook.
- Twitter was created in the spring of their kindergarten year.
- Just before they started 2nd grade, the first iPhone was released. Now many of them have the 4th or 5th generation iphone.
- In fourth grade soon after they returned from winter break, the first iPad was released.
The bottom line is that when today’s 8th grade students started kindergarten, none of us would have predicted things as they are today. As I mentioned at the beginning, in August 2014, a new group of students will start kindergarten at Park View. It is our job as educators to prepare them for success in the future. We don’t know what that future will look like but it is safe to say that it will be continually changing. New tools and new opportunities are created every day. What it means for us as educators is that we need to continue to learn and grow and adapt to provide the best educational experience we can for our children. Years ago a colleague of mine gave me a pen for my desk with a quote by Alan Kay that says, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” We need to continuously work on improving what we do and inventing and reinventing the future for the sake of all of our children.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Cursive? Keyboarding? Hmmm...
I shared this with my Board of Education last December...thought I would pass it on to others.
Recently on
my RSS feed I’ve seen a couple of headlines come across that made me
think. One was “Tim Cook ‘ditched’
physical keyboard, uses iPad and iPhone 80% of the time” and the other was
“Some states preserve penmanship despite tech gains”. As I read the two articles I thought back to
my Typing class in my junior year of high school (80-81). We used typewriters in that class and were
excited that we actually had some electric versions. At that point we didn’t have a sense of what
might be coming down the road…
In 1980-81,
who would have thought that we would come to a point of:
- using word processors instead of typewriters
to create documents?
- sending many more emails than we do letters
or cards?
- texting our children and our friends more
often than we call them?
- using an RSS feed to get our daily news
rather than the paper newspaper? (I admit that we still get the Sunday paper at
home but it is mainly for the sale papers…and now for many of those “there is
an app for that”).
When
students who are currently seniors in high school were in third grade
(2003-2004), the iPhone was still three years away, iTunes was just being
launched, and the fifth Harry Potter book was released. Now we are on the iPhone 5, iTunes has
expanded into music, movies, books and more and all of the Harry Potter movies
have been seen by millions.
Our current
3rd grade students will graduate from high school in June,
2022. At that point who knows how they
will be capturing and sending information.
Will they still use cursive at all?
Will home row typing as we currently know it be on its way out in favor
of “thumb-typing”? Will tools like Siri
make most sharing voice-activated?
I don’t know
the answer to these questions, but there is one thing I do know. We need to make sure we don’t restrict the
potential opportunities for our students because of how we learned or how we
did things in the past. If we did, we
might be considering implementing 1:1 electric typewriters rather than 1:1
iPads.
There is a
quote I keep on my desk by Alan Kay that says “The best way to predict the
future is to invent it.” It is our job
as educators to continue to invent the future for our students.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Why consider 1:1?
Why do districts or schools adopt a 1:1 laptop/iPad/tablet initiative? Some may do it to provide the resource to their students and because it is a direction that several districts are moving. They may be trying to “keep up with the Joneses”. Others may approach it with the idea that “if you build it, they will come”. In other words, they provide them to an entire grade level and then work to build the skills of the teachers to help them develop ways to use them in the classroom. In some cases, these teachers may not have been interested in moving in this direction.
We took a different approach in District 34 under the leadership of our ED of Educational Technology, Brian Engle. We started with the question of who is interested in exploring the use of this tool and is committed to fundamentally changing your instructional practices? We had several teachers step up and express a genuine interest and desire to do things differently instructionally. We have teachers at kindergarten, first, second and fifth grades involved in the project this year. All of these teachers were strong instructionally to begin with and their students were growing and performing well. They were all looking to take the next step.
We met with this group yesterday and to a person they shared experiences where students were able to take more ownership of their work, students had more opportunities to reflect on their learning, teachers were able to provide students more frequent descriptive feedback, and students were able to create products quickly and more efficiently than they were ever able to before. Students in our kindergarten bilingual classroom have recorded themselves reading at school and at home and been able to share these with their parents and their teacher and all can hear the progress they are making over time. The teachers all indicated that they can’t imagine going back because they don’t know how they would be able to provide the learning opportunities to their students that they have this year.
The conversations yesterday drove home the point that a 1:1 initiative is not about the tool, it has to be about the learning opportunities and the changing instructional practices in order for it to be truly meaningful.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Leadership is an Art
Max DePree is my favorite author on Leadership. His book Leadership is an Art has shaped who I am as a leader and I revisit it periodically. The ideas are simple but profound. As he defines leadership he states "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader."
Serving others is a key concept that leaders need to keep in focus. A leader needs to be willing to provide the support to others to help them be successful. That can mean sitting down and helping someone problem solve a situation or simply listening as someone talks through a challenge they are facing. A leader doesn't need to solve every problem on their own but needs to support the people they work with so they can develop effective solutions.
For anyone in any type of leadership role, I highly recommend DePree's book. It will help shape your thoughts and approach.
This is my first blog post. Over time I will share thoughts, stories and tidbits on leadership, particularly focused on the field of education. Please share your feedback so I can continue to learn and grow.
Serving others is a key concept that leaders need to keep in focus. A leader needs to be willing to provide the support to others to help them be successful. That can mean sitting down and helping someone problem solve a situation or simply listening as someone talks through a challenge they are facing. A leader doesn't need to solve every problem on their own but needs to support the people they work with so they can develop effective solutions.
For anyone in any type of leadership role, I highly recommend DePree's book. It will help shape your thoughts and approach.
This is my first blog post. Over time I will share thoughts, stories and tidbits on leadership, particularly focused on the field of education. Please share your feedback so I can continue to learn and grow.
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