A LYS Principal Reports... Even in the Ivory Tower

A LYS Principal reports from the field:

SC,

You know that I’m enrolled in the Rice University Education Entrepreneurship Program.  Well guess what we are discussing with our Business Fellowship cohorts? The Fundamental Five (Cain & Laird) - Innovative thinking at its BEST!!!

SC Response

Wow... incredible, humbling and I’m speechless. Thanks for sharing the great news.

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/Fundamental5
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook
• 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)
• Upcoming Presentations: Livingston ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Channelview ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Bushland ISD Staff Kickoff, Canadian ISD Staff Kickoff, Highland Park ISD Staff Kickoff, Sunray ISD Staff Kickoff, Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), American Association of School Administrators Conference (Multiple Presentations)
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

A Principal Shares... People are Listening

A new LYS Principal share the following:

SC,

You may not have believed me at the conference when I told you that I was going to present your material to my Superintendent.  Well... I did and my superintendent and my Secondary Administrative Team are sold on The Fundamental 5 and the coaching walkthrough program (PowerWalks).

Thank you for providing a REAL plan to improve our struggling school.  I feel focused - I know I will not be chasing near as many "rabbits" this year. I am fired up and ready to implement.  We have already bought a copy of the book, The Fundamental 5 (Cain & Laird), for every teacher and administrator and mailed it to him or her for summer reading. It will be our book study for the beginning of school. 

Thank you!

SC Response

Of course I believed you.  You were at a professional development conference on your own time and you were actively participating in the session.  Leaders who aren’t vested in the success of their school don’t do those things. 

You are correct in your understanding that the focused execution of the Foundation Trinity and instruction embedded with the Fundamental 5 are key to the success of your campus.  Just remember the World plays defense.  The more the distractions and minutia of B and C priority activities are allowed to fill your day, the less sure you can be that the following is occurring on a daily basis.

1. The right thing is being taught.

2. The right thing is being taught longer.

3. The right thing is being taught better. 

From a performance standpoint, the above is what matters. Everything else is just busy work.

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/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• 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) 
• Upcoming Presentations: Livingston ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Channelview ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Bushland ISD Staff Kickoff, Canadian ISD Staff Kickoff, Highland Park ISD Staff Kickoff, Sunray ISD Staff Kickoff, Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), American Association of School Administrators Conference 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

A LYS Principal Shares... Our STAAR Results

An old school LYS Principal shares her STAAR results.

SC,

Happy to report that once again, the Foundation Trinity has proven itself to be the Alpha and Omega of school improvement methods.  Check out our results and the results of our two closest peer schools.  And to increase the degree of difficulty (which is how Brezina and Brown trained me) I’m just going to share the results of our low SES students.  After all, they provide the best indication of the health of our instructional machine.

STAAR EOC (Low SES Passing Rate)	Reading	Writing	Algebra 1	Geometry	Biology	World Geography
LYS Campus	78% (1st)	59% (1st)	89% (1st)	100% (1st)	92% (2nd)	89% (1st)
Non-LYS Peer 1	62%	50%	78%	100%	78%	85%
Non-LYS Peer 2	53%	39%	84%	100%	95%	75%

We still have work to do.  But right now I think it is safe to say that our plan is working.

SC Response

We couldn’t be prouder of you and your team.  These scores are the result of a lot of sweat equity. And this was without the Fundamental 5, which as we both know, means that performance was left on the table. With the training and support that your staff will receive this school year, your peers schools will be falling further behind before they even get started.

We can’t wait to begin work with your teachers in August.

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/Fundamental5
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook 
• 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) 
• Upcoming Presentations: Livingston ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Channelview ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Bushland ISD Staff Kickoff, Canadian ISD Staff Kickoff, Highland Park ISD Staff Kickoff, Sunray ISD Staff Kickoff, Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), American Association of School Administrators Conference
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

Top Tweets From the Week of July 15, 2012

If you and your classroom / campus / district are to begin embedding the use of bootleg technology during instructional activities, from a policy/procedure perspective you must consider three things:

1. Preventing harm to students

2. Protecting the district’s network

3. Preventing disruption to the educational process

In doing so, we know that the following two policies are not realistic:

A. No one uses any technology, ever.

Or

B. Anyone can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to.

Which means that the answer, as you go forward, lies somewhere in the middle.  What I recommend is the following:

Understand that the advances in technology hardware, software, connectivity and portability are progressing at a rate faster than that of school bureaucracy.  Which means that your brand new technology policy is already out of date.  Therefore, technology and use policies need to be reviewed and revised annually, at minimum.  Summer is the perfect time to do this.

Understand that technology will be misused and abused.  Expect this.  Monitor and enforce with reasonable consequences.  Realize that for many, “getting over on the man,” is a game.  What these “gamers” are doing is showing you the weaknesses in your system.  Don’t get mad, fix your system.  This fix usually entails regular checks, monitoring and adults just paying attention to what students are doing.

Learning requires the risk of failure.  With bootleg technology, if you remove all the risk, you remove the opportunity to learn. If you ignore the risk, the fallout from unattended consequences can be devastating.  If you manage the risk, the positive effect on instruction can be exceed your expectations.

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 July 15, 2012.

1. Congratulations to LYSer, 'Bake' Baker. He is the new principal at Livingston HS! Who will be next?

2. Congratulations to LYSer, Annette Villerot. She is the new Assistant Superintendent in Comal ISD! Who will be next?

3. Just gave my wife the Fundamental 5 to peruse; she’s a curriculum director for an Indiana district. Get her on board. (By @patriot_teacher)

4. @LYSnation has turned around literally hundreds of school with Common Formative (Non-Graded) assessments! (By @tra_hall)

5. I wish principals would spend as much time thinking about next year's instruction as they spend thinking about next year's theme.

6. Quotes I've never heard: "What really made a difference in student performance this year was our theme."

7. My rule with late work was that the student policy should be the same as the staff policy. If Teachers could turn in paperwork late, so could the students.

8. You have to experience adversity to experience success. No Fear! (By @NavySEALPTTest)

9. The platform of the Texas Republican Party opposes teaching critical thinking skills to students. (By @anniemurphypaul)

10. Having dinner with three of the big brains in elementary education, Barbara Fine, Lesa Cain and Becky Koesel. I'm getting smarter by the second!

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/Fundamental5 
• Call Jo at (832) 477-LEAD to order your campus set of “Look at Me: A Cautionary School Leadership Tale” Individual copies available on Amazon.com!  http://tinyurl.com/lookatmebook
• 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)
• Upcoming Presentations: Livingston ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Channelview ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Bushland ISD Staff Kickoff, Canadian ISD Staff Kickoff, Highland Park ISD Staff Kickoff, Sunray ISD Staff Kickoff, Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote), Advancing Improvement in Education Conference (Multiple Presentations), American Association of School Administrators Conference
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation