Save the Date: NASSP Webinar with Sean Cain

OPEN TO ALL EDUCATORS, PK-12

Open to all! Either click on the link below or copy and paste it in your browser to register.

www1.gotomeeting.com/register/274089360

Think. Work. Achieve.

A LYSer Asks... The Intersection

A LYS Assistant Superintendent was concerned about the following:

SC,

I just received an email, evidently from a product company, claiming to be Lead Your School advertising “The Intersection.”  At first I thought it was LYS,  but is someone is trying to confuse the LYS Nation?

Thought you should know.

SC Response

Nothing to be alarmed about.  It's from us.  As in, “The Intersection of Theory and Practice.”

It is published and distributed by e-mail every Wednesday. This is our attempt to keep the LYS Nation current on the headlines and new thinking in our field.  After all, we do recognize that it is a full time job teaching, running campuses and running districts.

If you find it useful, read it. If not, it doesn’t hurt our feelings if you delete it.

And thanks for looking out for all of us!

LYS Assistant Superintendent Response

OK.  We don’t want those “outsiders” co-opting LYS.  Thank you for the heads up.

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: NASSP National Conference; The 21^st Century High School Conference  
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A Reader Asks... Instructional Coaching

A LYS Assistant Principal asks the following:

SC,

I attended one of your workshops in Austin and wanted a quick clarification about instructional coaching.  You stressed the importance of providing feedback to your teachers and having coaching pieces separate from evaluation pieces.  How do you provide constructive criticism and affirm the things going right for teachers, but not have it positively or negatively affect their evaluation?  Are you not supposed to praise teachers that could possibly become TINA's?

Your input and perspective would be appreciated!

LC Response

Thanks for attending one of Sean's sessions and again for thinking about these issues which affect our teachers in such a powerful way! Coaching teachers falls under the formative umbrella - we advocate providing feedback and coaching AFTER you have enough data to show trends, habits and routines that normally occur in the classroom.  Sitting down with teachers for a coaching conference usually occurs after 15-20 PowerWalks in that classroom.  You listen more than you talk and you set goals to work on over the next 15-20 PowerWalks to improve instruction.  You will notice that the teachers who respond to coaching will work to establish new habits and routines in the classroom that will impact the evaluations in a positive way, even though the coaching is separate.

On the flip side, a teacher who does not respond to coaching - a teacher who digs in his or her heels and refuses to put forth the effort to get better - then that is the time when you as the leader have a formal conference to tell them that their classroom visits will no longer be formative.  They will have evaluative visits that will be documented and a TINA will be developed.  That way you have started your timeline of when the evaluative cycle begins.  Then you develop a TINA with this teacher and he/she works through it.  

The goal of a TINA is to improve practice, so yes of course you give positive feedback when warranted.  We want the TINA to work! If the TINA works more students will learn and succeed with that teacher and the teacher is able to keep his/her job.  Sometimes the TINA doesn't work and it is the responsibility of leadership to do the right thing and NEVER pass on a "bad egg" to another campus where more students are short-changed because we didn't do what we needed to do.

So formative and evaluative classroom visits are different.  One is to grow and improve and the other is to demonstrate the growth and improvement.  Hope this helps!

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: NASSP National Conference; The 21^st Century High School Conference  
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

10 Surprising Things You Learn While Implementing 3-week Checkpoints

There is a cognitive understanding that it is impossible to “Unring the Bell.”  Meaning that once you know something, it is very difficult to remember what it was like to not know it.  Because I have been involved in the use of common 3-week checkpoints since the early 2000’s, it has been a long time since I first heard the bell ring.  This year I have been working with a lot of campuses that are new to the process.  As I have sat with teams of teachers as they have begun the structured assessment / analysis / adjustment process for the first time, I have had the privilege of seeing teachers unpeel the layers of deeper understanding.

Here have been the top “A-ha” moments I have observed.  This list applies universally in Grades 3-12 classrooms, regardless of content area.

1. If the teacher did not teach it, the students do not know it.

2. The teacher talking and telling does not mean that students are learning.

3. Stay in concrete modes of delivery and learning for significantly longer periods of time.

4. Significantly increase the amount of purposeful talk and critical writing that occurs in class.

5. Significantly increase the amount of time working of multi-step process questions.

6. Students need to draw the problem, highlight key words and information, and/or show their work.

7. Knowing which distracter the students picked highlights both student misunderstandings and instructional breakdowns.

8. Even a bad question can provide useful instructional information.

9. The “Deepest Hole” re-teaching strategy works.

10. Growth is good, Baby!!!

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: NASSP National Conference; The 21^st Century High School Conference  
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

PowerWalks Hero School (November 2013)

In furtherance of a LYS Nation tradition, we will take this time to tip our caps to the campuses that have embraced 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.  There were a total of 9,274 PowerWalks conducted during the past month and the November targets for Hero School designation were:

Big Schools – 300 PowerWalks Observations

Medium Sized Schools – 200 PowerWalks Observations

Small Schools – 115 PowerWalks Observations

Very Small Schools – 60 PowerWalks Observations.

Next month, due to the Christmas Holidays, we will adjust the targets:

Your December Hero School Targets

Big Schools – 175 PowerWalks Observations

Medium Sized Schools – 125 PowerWalks Observations

Small Schools – 75 PowerWalks Observations

Very Small Schools – 40 PowerWalks Observations.

Now without further ado, here are your twenty-five PowerWalks Hero Schools for the month of November 2013.  Congratulations!!!

Elementary Schools	Junior High and Middle Schools	Alternative Schools	Combined Campuses	High Schools
McFee ES (CFISD: mid-sized school) - 652	Tennyson MS (WISD: mid-sized school) - 513		Louise Schools (LISD: small school) - 145	Fairdale HS (JCPS: big school) - 335
Bell’s Hill ES (WISD: small school) - 501	Cesar Chavez MS (WISD: mid-sized school) – 421		Wink Schools (WLISD: small school) - 125	Kennedale HS (KISD: mid-sized school) - 230
Crestview ES (WISD: small school) - 281	Big Spring JH (BSISD: mid-sized school) - 277
Frazier ES (CFISD: mid-sized school) - 277	Hutto MS (HISD; mid-sized school) - 253
Dean Highland ES (WISD: small school) - 248	Carver Academy (WISD: mid-sized school) - 230
West Ave ES (WISD: small school) - 193
Moss ES (BSISD: small school) - 185
Ray ES (HISD: small school) - 172
Dublin ES (DISD: small school) - 157
Cottonwood Creek ES (HISD: small school) - 156
Marlin ES (MISD: small school) - 152
Washington ES (BSISD: small school) - 149
Hutto ES (HISD: small school) - 146
Goliad ES (BSISD: small school) - 136
Marcy ES (BSISD: small school) - 128
JH Hines ES (WISD: small school) - 121

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: NASSP National Conference; The 21^st Century High School Conference  
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Top LYS Tweets From the Week of November 24, 2013

A number of you in the LYS Nation are now Twitter users.  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 November 24, 2013.

1. One of the greatest signs of leadership maturity is NOT accusing others of your faults. (By @LYSNation)

2. Ignorance is an assault on your thinking, formed through assumptions. Intelligence comes from the level of the questions you ask. (By @BishopJakes)

3. Don't let your circumstances define your attitude today! Seize the moment and continue to be amazing! (By @TechNinjaTodd)

4. Excellence is achievable at any school. You just have to know what it is and be committed to do what it takes to get there. (By @Snowmanlearning)

5. There is plenty of room at the top – but no place to sit down. (By @CoachKWisdom)

6. All leaders make mistakes.  The key is to learn, get back up with generosity of spirit and humility, and lead on! (By @tgrierhisd)

7. Today's Quote: “When students begin to believe, they begin to achieve.” (By @DrRichAllen)

8. It's always too early to quit. (By @CoachKWisdom)

9. I don't want perfection, I want effort. –Unknown (By @Sports_HQ)

10. Hold the date! NASSP webinar on 12/11/13. Sean Cain on Improving Instruction Through Fundamental Change. Open to all PK thru 12 educators! (By @LYSNation)

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: NASSP National Conference; The 21^st Century High School Conference  
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook