A LYS Teacher Shares... Her LYS Principal

A LYS Teacher shares the following:

SC,

Our principal is LYS’er, Dewitt Smith. He attends all of your workshops and trained us on The Fundamental 5 even before the book was released. This year, The Fundamental 5, is one of the books we are studying. He is one of those guys that not only “talks the talk”, he “walks the walk”.

I wanted to attach an example of his weekly e-mails to the staff. I also wanted to say that his practices and leadership has turned our campus around. He has turned us into a professional learning community, and our teachers and students have truly benefited from it.

Tom Bean Middle School Family:

I have included a “quick hitter” teaching tip video for you below. My hope is that these clips will provide you with short applicable reminders/tips for best practice during the school year. The stuff that we already know that prompts us to say, “Oh yea, I forgot about that technique—I’ll implement it during “x, y, z” lesson. This week’s topic is “Attention Getting Signals”:

http://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/attention-getting-signals-practice?fd=0

I hope that this will prove to be a usable source of tips, support, and a sort of instructional "idea" springboard throughout the course of the year. Stay focused on The Fundamentals…

SC Response

Thanks for sharing. There is nothing better that news like this from the field. I would agree with your assessment that Dewitt is an outstanding principal. But based on all my conversations with him, he makes that case that it is the quality of the staff and the hard work of the students that drives the continued success of Tom Bean Middle School. All he does is make sure that the doors are open and that the teachers have the tools and support that they need.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “The Fundamental 5: The Formula for Quality Instruction.” Individual copies available on Amazon.com! http://tinyurl.com/4ydqd4t

Attend the LYS presentations at the Texas School Improvement Conference on 10/27/11

• Improve Now – 8:00am
• The Fundamental 5 – 9:15am
• You Can’t Fix What You Can’t See – 10:15am

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Confirmed 2012 Presentations: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference