nathan wood's posterous

4-Day School Week?

Here is a great article that summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of a four-day school week.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/aug/08/chattooga-schools-launch-4-day-week/?local

iPads in the Classroom

Here is a link that was sent to me in reference to the use of iPads in the classroom.  Check it out.

http://wcco.com/local/ipads.for.students.2.1628182.html

Simple Influential Way YOU Can Improve Your Children's Education

Read & write together:
    Research shows kids who read at home with their parents perform better in school.  Show your kids how much you value reading by keeping good books, magazine, and newspapers around the house.  Being a visible reader around your children is another great way to express the importance of reading. Take them on trips to the library and local book fairs.  By allowing your children to actively become involved with reading at a young age, they are more likely to become successful readers in school.  Let your kids read to you; and most importantly, talk about the books your read to them or they read to you.   What was the book about? Why did a character act that way? What will he or she do next?  These are all simple questions that you can ask your child that will enhance their comprehension processes.
    Look for other ways to teach children the significance of language, words, and stories. Tell stories to your children about their families and their culture. Point out words to children when you go out in public -- to the grocery, to the pharmacy, to the gas station, and other places around town.  Lastly, encourage your children to write notes / letters to siblings, grandparents and other relatives.

Use TV wisely:
    Experts in the field of education also report that academic achievement drops sharply for children who watch more than 10 hours of television during the school week.  This correlates to an average of approximately two hours each day.  As a result, experts recommend that parents should limit the amount of time students watch TV and help children select age-level appropriate educational programs.  Like with reading, parents are also encouraged to take the extra time to sit down, watch, and discuss shows with their kids. This will help children understand how stories are structured.

Establish a daily family routine with scheduled homework time:
    Studies show that successful students have parents who create and maintain family routines. By making sure your child goes to school every day with a positive and motivated attitude.  Establishing regular scheduled time for homework each afternoon or evening also leads to success.  Best case scenario includes setting aside a quiet, well lit place, where you can encourage your children to complete homework, read, or study.  Other daily routines that have positive impacts on your child's education  include time performing chores, eating meals together, and going to bed at an established time each night.

Talk to your children and teenagers -- and listen to them, too:
    Talking directly to your children, especially your teenagers, about the dangers of drugs and alcohol and the values you want them to have is another way for parents to positively influence their children's success as school. Even though these conversations can often become difficult and uncomfortable for both you and your children, research shows this can save their lives.  Setting positive examples and listening to what your children perspective on difficult issues can also foster solid relationships with teenagers and lead them to success.
    Accomplished educational experts, also expressed the influence that parents  have by communicating the importance of setting and meeting challenges in school. Tell your children that working hard and stretching their minds is the only way for them to realize their full potential. Encourage your children to take tough academic courses like geometry, chemistry, computer technology, a second language, art, and advanced occupational courses.  As a parent, one of the best things you can do for your children is make sure they never settle for doing less than their best.

Keep in touch with the school:
    Parents cannot afford to wait for schools to tell them how children are doing.  Successful students have parents who stay informed about their children's progress at school. To keep informed, parents can visit the school; communicate with teachers through personal, telephone, or email connections; or visit the schools website.
    Parents can also work with your students teachers and school to establish ways to get more involved. Many schools and teachers are always willing for a helping hand to volunteer in the classroom, and through extra-curricular activities.

Elementary iPod touch Lab

The newest technology in the elementary has been the addition of the new iPod touch lab.  The touch lab contains twenty iPod touches that can be used for a number of different reasons in the classroom.  I would like to thank Kirk Magill for the countless hours he has spent prepping the iPods for our students to use.  I would also like to recognize and congratulate Mrs. Harper for taking the time and effort to explore the opportunities these tools can bring into her classroom.  Look for more information about how the iPod touches are being used in the elementary classrooms in the upcoming months.

SAM Project

Here is a great article that I picked up at the National SAM Conference in Orlando last month.  This new article summarizes the SAM project and stresses the importance that delegation and time management play in improving instruction in the classroom.

How Principals Manage Their Time is Key to Improving Instruction in Their Schools
Principals tend to greatly overestimate the amount of time they spend on instruction. Ask most principals how much time they spend on instruction and they are likely to estimate they spend 70% or more of their time on instruction and 30% on other management issues when it is really the other way around, says Dr. Jody Spiro, senior program officer at the Wallace Foundation.

As part of its initiative to improve educational leadership, the Wallace Foundation developed a time/task analysis tool that allows principals to keep track of their time as precisely as a lawyer keeps track of billable hours. When they use the tool, principals consistently find they are spending spending 70% of their time on "buses, budgets, and behavior" and only 30% of their time on instruction, says Spiro.

Becoming aware of how they spend their time and then disciplining themselves to delegate many of the management tasks to a trusted staff member is one of the first steps principals can take to become a better instructional leader, according to the Wallace Foundation. One strategy advocated by the Foundation to free up more of a principal's time for instruction is to have a staff member play the role of School Administration Manager (SAM). A SAM is an assistant who takes on many of the principal's most time-consuming management tasks.

Currently, there are 160 principal/SAM teams in 37 districts in 9 states participating in the Wallace Foundation's School Administration Manager Project. Based on a recent evaluation of the project commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, principals spend a large share of their time (51%) on the following 5 management tasks:

   1. office work prep
   2. supervision of employees
   3. student supervision
   4. decision-making committees, groups and meetings
   5. student discipline

Principals spend another 20% of their time on other non-instruction tasks such as building management, meeting with parents and external officials, etc.

In schools with a SAM, according to the evaluation, after one year principals increased the amount of time they spent on instructional tasks from 32% of their work week to an average of 45%. In hours, this means the principals spent about 5 hours more per week on instructional issues or about 58 minutes per day. SAM project principals at the middle and high school levels spent less time than principals at the elementary school level on instruction (36% compared to 51%).

How Instructional Time is Spent
Principals used the time they gained for instruction by working with a SAM on the following top 3 instructional leadership activities:

   1. observation and walkthrough
   2. instruction-related office work
   3. prep work with students

On a weekly basis, principals spent an additional 69 minutes on observation and walkthroughs, 55 additional minutes on office work related to instruction and an additional 49 minutes on work with students, according to the evaluation.

Smaller amounts of time (1 to 4 minutes per day, or up to 20 minutes per week) were spent on providing feedback to teachers, modeling and teaching, interaction with external officials related to instruction and on "celebrating" instruction. Universally, when principals look at how they spend their instructional time, they say they need to do more observation and walkthroughs, says Spiro.

Piloted in elementary schools in Kentucky, SAMs were originally envisioned to be new hires from outside the education field, but in practice, that model, especially as it has spread to middle schools and high schools, has mutated into several variations. Not all SAMs are new hires from outside education. Some are recruited from inside the school. School secretaries or teachers may leave their positions to become a SAM. Retired principals are sometimes recruited for the position.

In another variation of the model (Model 3), an existing staff member may merely take on some of the roles of the SAM without taking on all the management responsibilities. (Researchers found that when this model was used it resulted in less added time for principals on instruction.) Of the SAMs in the project, 31% had been teachers, 37% said they had been employed as "other school staff," 16% were retired principals or assistant principals and only 14% had no previous employment in schools.

Effectiveness as instructional leaders
How effective are principals when they do focus on instruction?

"Although the vast majority of participating principals wanted to be instructional leaders, few articulated a vision of what an instructional leader does or which activities would be the highest priorities," the researchers write.

Many needed help setting instruction goals and identifying the leadership activities that would pay off in their schools. Spiro says a next step for the project is to identify the high-leverage tasks that will get the "biggest bang for the buck" in instruction. For example, a principal is sure to get more leverage from working to develop a professional learning community than from teaching a class to students, although both are instruction activities.

Based on time/task analysis, principals currently spend most of the time they devote to instruction on the following 7 tasks:

   1. observation, walkthrough
   2. planning, curriculum and assessment,
   3. instructional meetings with individuals or groups
   4. decision-making committees, groups and meetings
   5. instruction-related office work prep (review lesson plans, prep for feedback/evaluations or for instructional meetings)
   6. employee supervision
   7. work with students

Feedback to Teachers
Principals spent far less time in providing feedback to teachers (60 minutes per week after one year of implementation) than on "observation/walkthrough" (3 hours, 59 minutes per week), according to the study.

One district-level staff member commented: "Students don't improve just because the principal is in the classroom. But the critical point is that you do not influence that teacher until you provide feedback."

Teachers in several schools said that their principals gave little or no individual feedback, choosing instead to focus on giving group feedback on checklist criteria (e.g. whether class objectives had been posted on the board), according to the report. Principals who used handheld devices to collect checklist data during observations often emailed the results to teachers with brief comments.

Principals hoped to improve their own skills in giving teachers' individual feedback. One principal spoke of wanting to encourage an ongoing professional conversation with teachers and to encourage greater reflection.

"I don't know if [giving feedback] ever gets easy," one principal said. Another talked about having focused, as a result of the SAM project, on giving teachers feedback that was a lot deeper.

"It is better. The teachers are very responsive to very specific feedback and suggestions."

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For more information about the National SAM Project visit:  www.samsconnect.com