Wednesday, June 17, 2015

A Reader Asks... Your Prioritized Improvement Actions - Part 1

In response to the 7/30/2014 post, “Your Prioritized Improvement Actions,” a LYS Principal asks:

SC,

What is Girls and Boys Town?

SC Response
The first and, I believe, the best discipline management system for schools.

Their book, The Well Managed Classroom, is to discipline management what Bloom's Taxonomy is to instruction.

Every other discipline management system is a modified, and often, lesser version of their original. 

There is a code that you should listen for when discussing Girls and Boy Town. If an educator says, "We tried it and it didn't work for our school," what they are really saying is, "We didn't work at our school."

For more information, here’s a link: www.boystowntraining.org

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 
  • Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
  • Upcoming Presentations: Texas ASCD Summer Conference; NAESP National Conference; Illinois ASCD Fall Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
  • Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

A Reader Asks... Why Not Feedback After 3 Minutes?

A LYS Central Office Administrator asks the following:

SC,

Why do you coach that teachers should not to receive feedback (normally) after a single observation?  Why must we wait until patterns/trends are established before providing feedback to individual teachers? This seems counter-intuitive.  Help.

SC Response
I get these questions a lot due to the fact that this practice does not align with the existing schema of most campus and district administrators.

Many campus and district administrators believe that every time they enter a classroom, they need to be evaluating that classroom. But this should not be the case.  The only time that an administrator should be evaluating the classroom (teacher) is when:

1. The observer has notified the teacher that a high stakes evaluative visit should be expected within a specific and narrow window of time.

2. The observer observes the classroom for at least 20 minutes, giving the teacher the opportunity to deliver instruction and manage the classroom using a number of effective practices.

So take PowerWalks, the system and process your district is now implementing.  PowerWalks is a formative observation tool. It has been designed for the SOLE purpose of creating game film for coaching teachers. In this endeavor, multiple observers engage in frequent observation of classrooms.  These observations are short, 3 to 5 minutes.  Now one, short classroom observation means almost nothing.  Good, bad or indifferent, it is a random wisp of time.  The purpose of the visit is to cue effective practices, provide some positive reinforcement (if warranted), and collect some objective data.

The key word is data.  One short observation represents an INVALID data sample. This is because the size of the sample size is statistically insignificant.  This is not opinion; it’s math.  Take 15 to 20 individual observations as a data sample and what the statisticians will tell you is that the sample size can be considered significant.  Which means the trends that are identified in the sample are likely to be real, instead of random occurrence.  With a real identified trend, coaching, reflection, problem solving and improvement can occur. With random occurrence, any action that is taken has only a random chance of being effective.

Now, if you are Charles Barkley, you don’t trust all this trend/statistics mumbo-jumbo. That’s OK (not really, I’m just being polite). In the real world of coaching, every coach worth his/her salt observes the player over multiple reps before making a coaching suggestion.  Whether they realize it or not, thru the observation of multiple reps they are filtering out the random from the engrained.  Then they work to replace, remediate, or leverage the engrained. 

PowerWalks is for coaching.  Until that understanding is embraced and internalized, it will always feel strange. 

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 
  • Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool) 
  • Upcoming Presentations: Texas ASCD Summer Conference; NAESP National Conference; Illinois ASCD Fall Conference (Multiple Presentations) 
  • Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Monday, June 15, 2015

Top LYS Tweet From the Week of June 7, 2015

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 June 7, 2015.

1. A challenge to all leaders attending summer learning: Go back, take action, and DO what you tweeted or posted about. (By @CabidaCain)

2. The best intervention is great instruction. (By @JohnWink90)

3. There's a big difference in leading people and managing things! (By @herbertoneiljr)

4. I call 'em like I see 'em.  Common Core hysteria needs an official tin foil hat to identify its followers. (By @RatliffT)

5. Today's best practices were once someone's innovative new idea. Don't get stuck in (or with) a box! Be an innovator not an imitator! (By @TeachLearn68)

6. Schools that blame programs misunderstand technical versus adaptive challenges.  It’s all about coaching and support! (By @tra_hall)

7. We ask those experimenting on our children with exotic, unproven education policies to stop. Now. (By @pastors4txkids)

8. If instruction stops after the high stakes test, it's hard to believe your argument that teaching is more than a test score. (By @BluntEducator)

9. We regret having to speak so directly to those in authority this session. But not as much as we regret their bad bills harmful to our kids. (By @pastors4txkids)

10. Learning how The Fundamental 5 (Cain and Laird) can be the tool to increase relevance and rigor! (By @GloffMona)

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
  • Now at the Apple App Store: Fun 5 Timer (Fundamental 5 Delivery Tool); PowerWalks CLC (Networked Formative Observation Tool)
  • Upcoming Presentations: Texas ASCD Summer Conference; NAESP National Conference; Illinois ASCD Fall Conference (Multiple Presentations)
  • Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook