A Superintendent Writes... (UIL Disconnect - Part 4)

In response to the 8/10/11 post, “The Ol’ Ball Coach Writes, UIL Disconnect – Part 3,” a LYS Superintendent writes:

SC,

Years ago I was an Assistant Principal on a mission for student achievement and saw athletics as a part of the problem. A wise old coach gave me the article, 17 Reasons Why Football is Better Than High School, and it helped me get a better perspective on how to build great schools.

SC Response

A timeless article! And yet another reason why we work well together. I openly admit that I modeled my instructional practices after my favorite coaches (Wallace, Tidwell, Kemp and Vera). And I never apologized for structuring the daily activities of my campuses like a well-run football practice.

For the LYS Nation, I have summarized the seventeen reasons and if a reason in some way correlates with a Fundamental 5 practice I will note that with a (F5).

1. Players are considered important contributors rather than passive recipients. (F5)

2. Players are encouraged to excel. (F5)

3. Players are honored. (F5)

4. A player can let the team down.

5. Repetition is honorable.

6. The unexpected happens all the time. (F5)

7. Practices run longer than a one period time allotment.

8. Football homework is different than what was covered in practice.

9. Emotions and human contact is part of the work. (F5)

10. Players get to choose their roles. (F5)

11. Better players teach less-skilled players. (SC Note: And for the players on the scout team, the less-skilled players teach the better players). (F5)

12. There is a lot of individual instruction and encouragement from adults. (F5)

13. The adults who participate are genuinely interested. (F5)

14. Community volunteers are actively sought after.

15. Ability isn’t aged linked. (F5)

16. Football is more than the sum of its parts. (F5)

17. Public performance is expected. (F5)

Seventeen Reasons Why Football is Better Than High School, Herb Childress, Phi Delta Kappan, April 1998.

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

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Confirmed 2012 Presentations: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference

A Reader Asks... PowerWalks and Fundamental 5 Support

A LYS Principal asks,

SC,

Is there a site or a group of contacts where we, as people that are using Power Walks and attempting to implement The Fundamental 5, can go to share ideas and/or ask questions to those who are also doing one or both?

Specifically, I am looking for some advice on helping my kindergarten teachers with lesson framing in a way that their students (who can’t read) will understand and begin to learn the process of lesson framing. Any suggestions would be great.

SC Response

As of now, there is not a specific site devoted to PowerWalks or the Fundamental 5. However, we have been getting more and more requests for a support site and a regular conference. In the interim, you can follow the LYS Daily Blog (www.lysnation.com) or the LYS Twitter Feed (www.twitter.com/lysnation).

To answer your question, Pre-Kinder and Kindergarten teachers often use pictures in their lesson frames. They also write them in very concrete and student friendly language and post them prominently in the classroom, as the upper grades do. But the PK and Kindergarten teacher is much more animated and overt as he or she reads the lesson frame to the class and refers back to the frame more frequently than an upper grade teacher. Presenting and reviewing the frame often becomes a reading exercise, much like the teacher reading from a book is a reading exercise.

Hope this helps and that everything is going well.

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

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Confirmed 2012 Presentations: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference

A Superintendent Submits... Why We have to Keep Coaching

A LYS Superintendent submits the following:

SC,

This is why the work of LYS’ers is nowhere near being complete. I recently was sharing with my staff that based on the early released STAAR test questions, business as usual will not prepare our students to be successful. I pointed out that we are going to have to better implement the Foundation Trinity to identify what we need to let go of. Based on the following comment that a teacher sent me, we have to get more teachers reading the LYS blog.

“It’s a pity that our students no longer have opportunities to cut, color, and glue simply because it is not in the scope and sequence. Whatever happened to practicing those fine motor skills for those kids who might need them someday to be something other than a pencil pusher? The wrong people are making these accountability tests.”

SC Response

Two things about the comment you shared. First, as you briefly touched on, we have to train ourselves to let go of the practices and routines that merely sponge time. Just because students are doing something doesn’t mean that they are doing something instructionally valuable. It is not just the “Crayola Curriculum” that passes for acceptable instructional activities. It is also the copying directly from the overhead, whole classroom turn reading, spelling and vocabulary assignments in isolation, multi-period benchmark testing, etc. We complain that we don’t have enough to time to teach students the scope of the curriculum at the appropriate depth. Yet if we were to add it up, we voluntarily waste weeks of instructional time each year. Like it or not, many of the causes of poor school performance are self-inflicted.

Second, I would like to point out that schools still create ample opportunities for students to cut, color and paste. That’s why it is standard practice to schedule art periods in elementary school.

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

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Confirmed 2012 Presentations: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference

PowerWalks Hero Schools (October 2011)

New to the blog, I’m going to celebrate and recognize campuses that are taking the most important step in creating and maintaining an action oriented professional learning community. These are campuses that have conducted an extraordinary number of formative classroom observations in a given month. This month the cutoff numbers are as follows:

Big Schools – 425 PowerWalks Observations

Medium Sized Schools – 275 PowerWalks Observations

Small Schools – 150 PowerWalks Observations

Very Small Schools – 100 PowerWalks Observations.

So without further adieu, here are your thirty PowerWalks Hero Schools for the Month of October. Congratulations!!!

Elementary Schools	Junior High and Middle Schools	Alternative Schools	Combined Campuses	High Schools
Cottonwood Creek ES (HISD)	Farley MS (HISD)	Afton Oaks (JWJPCS)	Louise Schools (LISD)	Hutto HS (HISD)
Ray ES (HISD)	Luling JH (LISD)	Grandbury (JWJPCS)	Poth Schools (PISD)	Luling HS (LISD)
Luling ES (LISD)	Marble Falls JH (MFISD)	San Marcos (JWJPCS)		Manor HS (MISD)
Oak Meadows ES (MISD)	Lake Air IS (WISD)	Waco Alternative School (WISD)		Marlin HS (MISD)
Marlin ES (MISD)	Tennyson MS (WISD)			Waco HS (WISD)
Alta Vista ES (WISD)	University MS (WISD)
Bell’s Hill ES (WISD)
Brook Avenue ES (WISD)
Crestview ES (WISD)
JH Hines ES (WISD)
Kendrick ES (WISD)
Lake Waco ES (WISD)
North Waco ES (WISD)

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

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Confirmed 2012 Presentations: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference

Top LYS Tweets from the Week of October 23, 2011

As many of you know, I spend well more than half my work time on campuses, watching, training and talking to educators at all levels of competency, capacity and success. One thing that I am observing all to often is innovative, energetic and engaging teachers having to hide their new practices and tools. Most likely, there are teachers on your campus right now that are attempting to integrate bootleg technology into their class. They don’t do it often because they are afraid of getting caught by administration and being reprimanded. What is interesting is when these teachers are caught, most principals are proud of them.

So quit making innovation a deviant practice. Let your staff know that if they have an idea for using a new tool in the classroom they should tell you. That, if necessary, you will grant a short-term waiver to antiquated policy in order for someone to pilot something new. Now instead of making your most forward thinking staff outlaws, you can turn them into trailblazers. Your worst-case scenario is that the pilot doesn’t work. But how is that different than the current nothing that is the status quo? As the saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

A number of you in the LYS Nation are now using your own bootleg technology devices to follow Twitter. If you haven’t done so yet, we want you to join us. To let you see what you are missing, here are the Top 10 LYS Tweets from the week of October 23, 2011, as tabulated by the accountants at Price Waterhouse.

1. Every announcement interruption during class sandbags instructional momentum. So unless the building is on fire, what is so important?

2. Listening to Pre-K, K and Fine Arts teachers discuss lesson framing may be the best practical discussions on pedagogy you will ever hear.

3. Often the best coaching on campus occurs in the band hall. One band director getting 60 kids to work and march as one. Without the support of a staff of position coaches.

4. The Algebra I class doesn't have tryouts and every student is expected to pass. Why do the athletic have try-outs & get to cut players?

5. @LYSNation, I have argued for years that athletics deals in false positives by weeding out those unlikely to succeed in the first place. (by @seaboltm)

6. (As a school success factor) Parent involvement is a measure of correlation not causation.

7. Rating schools based on the level of parent involvement is yet another way that accountability is biased against the less affluent.

8. The constant search for the magic intervention program is a symptom of leaders giving up on teachers, teachers giving up on kids, or both.

9. You can wring your hands over campus climate and culture or you can do what is right for students. Every day by every adult.

10. Just saw a student get in trouble for pulling out his cell phone after completing his work. So doing nothing is better than doing something?

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

Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Confirmed 2012 Presentations: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference