Coming Soon - Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale

I just approved the final layout of my third book, Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale. What you are looking at is the cover art.  Written in the style of a fairy tale, Look at Me, is a reminder of the unintended consequences that can occur when we forget that leadership is actually stewardship.  Based of a true story, the names have been changed to protect the guilty.  

If everything stays on schedule, the book should be available by the beginning of June.

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
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

A Gathering of LYSers - TASSP June 13th to 15th

If you have the opportunity to get to Austin, Texas in mid-June, plan on attending the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals Summer Conference.  It may be the best state-level educators’ conference in the country.  It is definitely the largest.  Also, the conference has turned into the largest gathering of LYSers of the year.  Last year, over 60 members of the LYS Nation were in attendance.  Even more are expected this year.

In addition, the following members of the ever-growing LYS Nation will be presenting at least one session during the conference.   

• Brandy Baker – Current school administrator
• E. Don Brown – LYS coach and former president of NASSP and TASSP
• Lesa Cain – LYS coach and former principal in Cypress-Fairbanks ISD
• Sean Cain – LYS coach
• Jeff Kreiger – Current school administrator
• Mike Laird – Current school administrator and best selling author
• John Montelongo – Current school administrator
• Chane Rascoe – Current school superintendent
• Mike Seabolt – Current school superintendent
• John Schumacher – Current school administrator

There is nothing like spending three days sharing ideas with hardcore school reformers to get you fired up for the next school year.  I hope to see you there.

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
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

PowerWalks Hero Schools (April 2012)

As is now a LYS Nation tradition, we will take time to tip our caps to the campuses that are taking the most important step in creating and maintaining an action oriented professional learning community.  These are the campuses that have conducted an extraordinary number of formative classroom observations in a given month.  Due to Easter Break and statewide testing, for the month of April the cutoff numbers were as follows:

Big Schools – 250 PowerWalks Observations

Medium Sized Schools – 175 PowerWalks Observations

Small Schools – 100 PowerWalks Observations

Very Small Schools – 50 PowerWalks Observations.

So without further adieu, here are your twenty-four PowerWalks Hero Schools for the Month of April.  Congratulations!!!

(#) = Number of Months in a Row

Elementary Schools	Junior High and Middle Schools	Alternative Schools	Combined Campuses	High Schools
Cottonwood Creek ES (HISD) (7)	Hutto MS (HISD)	Afton Oaks (JWJPCS)	Louise Schools (LISD) (7)	Hutto HS (HISD) (2)
Alta Vista ES (WISD) (3)	Brazos MS (WISD)	Garza County (JWJPCS)
Bell’s Hill ES (WISD) (7)	Lake Air IS (WISD)	Granbury (JWJPCS)
Brooke Ave ES (WISD) (3)	Tennyson MS (WISD)	Hays County (JWJPCS)
Crestview ES (WISD) (3)		San Marcos (JWJPCS)
Dean-Highland ES (WISD) (3)		Waco Alternative (WISD)
JH Hines ES (WISD) (7)
Meadowbrook ES (WISD)
North Waco ES (WISD) (7)
Provident Heights ES (WISD)
South Waco ES (WISD) (3)
Sul Ross 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
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

Make the Last Month Count

When you look at schools that outperform their peers, one of the telling differences is the urgency of May instruction.  Sadly, most schools in the month of May start to ease up and coast to the finish.  Those who don’t begin to separate themselves from the pack.  It is amazing what an extra month of focused instruction will do for student performance. 

This isn’t a sermon where I say, "Shame on you for not sprinting to the finish."  That would be the easy way out and doesn’t attack the real question, “What does sprinting to the end look like?”

So here are a couple of examples:

1. Loop Teachers.  Instead of taking the first month of school for students and teachers to get to know each other, use the last month.  Have teachers from the next grade teach a week or two at the lower grade.  They can preview up coming content, review pre-requisite material, set expectations and begin to build relationships. 

2. Fact Month.  Every teacher I know complains that students no longer know their facts.  Use May to teach the facts most critical for next year’s content.  Build in a sense of competition with weekly team-based fact bees.

3. Capstone Projects.  Use May for students to work on interdisciplinary and/or capstone projects.  These can be either individual or team projects.  A consistent teacher complaint is that standardized testing has robbed us of the opportunity to connect and extend the curriculum.  What better time to do exactly that, than May?

4. Start Next Year’s Curriculum.  For most schools, the actual curriculum delivery schedule is from the first day of school until the state (or district) summative test.  Then from the day after the test to the end of school, the pace of instruction rapidly ebbs.  The actual curriculum delivery schedule of many high performing schools is quite different.  On these campuses, the first day of instruction of new content begins on the day after the state (or district) summative test and goes full speed until the summative test next school year.

Just remember, May is what campus leadership makes it.

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 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

Top LYS Tweets From the Week of April 22, 2012

I’m writing this as Lesa and I return to Texas, after spending a week working in the Boston area.  Since this was our first time in New England (by the way, it is well worth the visit), we took advantage of every bit of down time to sample the history, sites and culture.  Our travel tool of choice? Our I-Phones. 

Using our I-Phones, we researched where to visit, when to visit and how to get there. Our phones guided us everywhere, so we never got lost.  After visiting someplace or seeing something if we wanted to know more about it, we would research the topic on our phones.  When deciding where to eat, our phones pointed us to the highest rated (by customers) restaurants in our immediate area. And when our trip was commencing, we checked in to our flight home on our phone. 

Our smart phones freed up us up from basic organization and knowledge based tasks so we could focus on exploration, analysis and evaluation based learning activities. In short, our bootleg technology not only ramped up the rigor of our adult learning, but also allowed us to extend our time at those higher levels of rigor.  Embrace bootleg technology on your campus and in your classroom and before long similar opportunities will present themselves to teachers and students.  

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 April 22, 2012.

1. Great audience at the NSBA Conference. Many stayed after the presentation to learn more about LYS Campuses!!!

2. School Reform / Improvement can be summarized in one key concept: Adult practice drives student performance.

3. President John Adams’ first job out of college - Public School Teacher

4. Read yesterday that 3% of the voting populace will decide who goes to Austin. (By @cheadhorn)

5. Government investment in education, science and infrastructure has declined as a share of the economy since the 1970s. (By @FareedZakaria)

6. MIT essentially runs a four period trimester with the smartest kids is the world. Why do you still have your weakest students on an 8-period day, semester schedule?

7. To say PowerWalks are useless to education is like saying a tachometer is useless to a car. Both statements show complete misunderstanding. (By @txschoolsupe)

8. Dallas ISD superintendent will make $300,000 per year, manages 12,000 employees, 156,000 students. By comparison, the CEO of Hershey manages 10,000 employees for $3.4 million per year. (By DrJerryRBurkett)

9. MIT students who pass fencing, archery, sailing and pistol earn a degree in Pirate. No joke.

10. MIT is 100% WI-FI accessible. Use of bootleg technology is expected. What is the expectation on your campus?

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 
• Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Plans (Fundamental 5 Lesson Plan Tool); PW Lite (Basic PowerWalks Tool); PW Pro (Mid-level PowerWalks Tool)
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)