State of the Blog - The Last 100 Posts (1,000 and Counting)

Hello, LYS Nation. This is the 1,000^th post to the column, so as has become a tradition, we will review our progress.

First, the review:

• The 1^st post was on Monday, February 16, 2009.
• The 100^th post was on April 14, 2009.
• The 200^th post was on June 10, 2009
• The 300^th post was on September 2, 2009
• The 400^th post was on December 16, 2009
• The 500^th post was on April 7, 2010
• The 600^th post was on August 2, 2010
• The 700^th post was on December 17, 2010
• The 800^th post was on May 17, 2011
• The 900^th post was on October 5, 2011
• The 1,000^th post is today’s, March 7, 2012

The 900 posts represent more than 1,030 pages of single spaced text. This is the equivalent of about a 4,040-page book.

The top 9 key words have been: Leadership (300); Teachers (237); Principals (221); Instruction (142); Fundamental Five (125); LYS Nation (123); E. Don Brown (115); Robert “Bob” Brezina (114); Campus / School Improvement (100)

The top 10 posts, in terms of distribution, have been:

1. A Reader Asks... Modeling Examples (8/25/11)

2. A LYS Principal Submits... The Updated Lesson Cycle (11/15/11)

3. Crunch Time Common Assessments (2/11/2011)

4. Top LYS Tweets from the Week of January 22, 2012 (1/30/12)

5. A TAKS Reminder From the LYS Elementary Coaching Team (4/19/2011)

6. A Reader Asks... Grading Policy (1/12/2011); STAAR, EOC and Final Grades – Part 2 (1/18/12)

7. Student vs. Teacher Data (8/17/2011)

8. A New LYS Teacher Shares... This Really Works! (11/11/11)

9. Readers Ask... More Assessment Questions (11/5/2010)

10. Top LYS Tweets from the Week of March 20, 2011 (3/28/2011)

There have been over 163,980 page hits.

There are 1,110 e-mail subscribers. Thank you!

There are now international readers and e-mail subscribers, with the following 12 countries represented: Australia, Canada, Cayman Islands, Egypt, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand; United Kingdom, United States, U.S. Virgin Islands

All of this is incredibly exciting; especially when you consider that not too long ago ago, every number was 0.

A Little Blatant Self Promotion:

First, if you like the blog and you haven’t signed up for the e-mail subscription, please do so. I find that it’s easier to write to people than it is to write to web hits.

Second, if you like the blog and find it useful, tell three other people. This blog is a much more powerful resource for school improvement when it is a dialogue.

Third, if you have not sent in a comment yet, please do so. Education research points out that the act of critical writing actually makes the learner smarter. Let the blog assist you in sharpening your saw.

Finally,

Thank you so much for reading and responding. This network which started out as a way for just a handful of principals to stay connected has turned into a small nation of board members, central office administrators, campus leaders, and teachers who are focused on redefining what students are capable of. Who knows what we will discuss in the next 100 posts.

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: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference; Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

What Are You Doing For Crunch Time?

Over the past couple of weeks I have been meeting with Principals to address their action plans as they lead their campuses into crunch time before the administration of state accountability tests. Here is the summary of those conversations.

1. Administration must actively participate in instructional planning session with teachers.

2. Address critical and deficient student learning expectations during instructional planning.

3. Professional support staff must keep doing their walk-thru’s. In the fourth quarter, the coaching staff doesn’t go wait it out in the locker room. The value of coaching is best measured in the quality of preparation and the quality of execution. Right now is when execution matters.

4. Teachers must execute the Fundamental 5. Every lesson, every day.

5. When observing staff, have quick coaching conversations based on small adjustments that address missed opportunities.

6. Teachers must close each lesson!!!

7. Identify and drop the stuff that doesn’t matter. At this stage in the game, teaching and learning is the only priority.

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: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference; Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

Top LYS Tweets from the Week of February 26, 2012

It’s hard for me to believe, but we have just racked up another anniversary. A year ago, I started my bootleg campaign for bootleg technology. I know that depending on the school, in a single year, nothing can change or everything can change. So what has happened on your campus or in your district? This week, send me your bootleg technology update. What have been your successes? What have been your failures? What is your next step? What is your hold up? Not only am I curious, but we also need to increase the bootleg technology experience and knowledge base within the LYS Nation. Let’s even our playing field.

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 February 26, 2012, as tabulated by the accountants at Price Waterhouse.

1. Thanks to @LYSNation I'm using math flash cards when lining kids up from recess. 5th graders are learning laws of exponents. (By @mike_metz)

2. Just finished a staff refresher on the Fundamental Five. Thanks @LYSNation (By @JerryRBurkett)

3. I just purchased Fun Five Plan from App Store. I love it!! Perfect tool for high-level lesson planning! Can't wait 2 share! (By @janet_wright)

4. Teaching the wrong thing better is at best a moral victory; at worst a waste of time.

5. Accountability must look different when the student population is more than 1 standard deviation from the mean. On either side of the curve.

6. "Teach, Assess, Adjust, Repeat"... benchmarks need to go away. (By@tlonganecker)

7. A desk audit without field observation is management BY dummies.

8. This year, for the first time since the Civil War, the Texas Legislature did not fund student growth in its budget. (By @tgrierhisd)

9. Keep students busy and move with a purpose. The longer it takes adults to move the more opportunities kids have to get in trouble.

10. Your message (as a leader) should be understandable at all levels (of the organization) and serve as a guide for decision making.

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: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference; Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

LYS App Upgrade... Fun 5 Plans

Hundreds of teachers currently use Fun 5 Plans. This lesson plan app lets teachers build lessons with the Fundamental 5 practices embedded throughout and then maps instructional Rigor and Relevance. If you are not using it, not only is it really cool, you have just been rewarded for waiting. How? The upgraded app was just released, now along with everything else the tool does, the ability to file and organize lessons has been significantly improved.

If you are a current user, go to the Apple App Store and download the upgrade. If you are not a current user but are now ready to Fundamentally improve the quality of your lesson plans, simply go you the App Store and search for Fun 5 Plans.

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: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference; Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

PowerWalks Hero Schools (February 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. For the month of February the cutoff numbers were as follows:

• Big Schools – 325 PowerWalks Observations
• Medium Sized Schools – 225 PowerWalks Observations
• Small Schools – 150 PowerWalks Observations
• Very Small Schools – 75 PowerWalks Observations.

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

(#) = Number of Months in a Row

Elementary Schools	Junior High and Middle Schools	Alternative Schools	Combined Campuses	High Schools
McFee ES (CFISD) (4)	Hutto MS (HISD) (4)	Afton Oaks (JWJPCS) (2)	Louise Schools (LISD) (5)	Waco HS (WISD)
Cottonwood Creek ES (HISD) (5)	Marble Falls MS (MFISD) (3)	Garza County (JWJPCS) (3)
Hutto ES (HISD)	Lake Air Intermediate (WISD) (2)	Granbury (JWJPCS) (2)
Ray ES (HISD) (2)	Tennyson MS (WISD)	Hays County (JWJPCS)
Stanfield ES (SISD)		San Marcos (JWJPCS)
Alta Vista ES (WISD)		Waco Alternative School (WISD) (5)
Bell’s Hill ES (WISD) (5)
Brooke Ave ES (WISD)
Cedar Ridge ES (WISD) (3)
Crestview ES (WISD)
Dean-Highland ES (WISD)
Hillcrest ES (WISD) (4)
JH Hines ES (WISD) (5)
Kendrick ES (WISD) (5)
Meadowbrook ES (WISD) (2)
North Waco ES (WISD) (5)
South Waco ES (WISD)
Viking Hills 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: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference; Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

A LYS Principal Submits... A Waste of Instructional Time

A frustrated LYS Principal submits the following:

One of the many things I learned from E. Don Brown is that there is a simple litmus test for every decision you make as an instructional leader.

If it's good for adults, look carefully, because it is probably bad for kids.

As you know, last week, classroom instruction in our entire school district was put on hold for four days in order to give a released TAKS benchmark. The reason given for this suspension of what's good for kids, instruction, was that we needed to some valid "data.” How they are aligning TAKS to the unseen STAAR is evidently above my pay grade. Of course, we already have plenty of available data from the common assessments we have administered throughout the year. But for the Mensa candidates at the white house, this data isn’t valid. It seems that non-teaching adults need a never ending flow of more test data so they could show other non-teaching adults how successful we are as a district at collecting "data."

Good for adults (who don’t interact with students) but bad for kids!

We have approximately 135 instructional days from the beginning of school to STAAR time. We just wasted four days that my students and teachers can’t get back. Don't get me wrong! I know that we need to collect data in order to make good decisions and to correct our course of action on the fly. But every time you weigh the herd, you have to skip feeding the herd. If we keep weighing the herd at the exclusion of feeding the herd, we're going to have some pretty skinny cows!

SC Response

Skinny cows? Is that where we get lean beef?

I feel your pain. Frequent benchmark testing is simply superstitious behavior that adds no value to the quality of instruction. Just today, I was explaining to a large audience the value of short-term assessment over benchmarking. I shared that two benchmarks a year are all that is needed. One in January and one at the end of the year (in Texas, TAKS is the end of the year benchmark). For the rest of the year, teach, assess, adjust, repeat. The first question I got was, “How do you know if the students are making adequate progress.”

I said, “Teach, assess, adjust, repeat.”

She wasn’t convinced. So I left her with this to think about. I have yet to come across the district that has tested its way out of the ditch. But I can show you scores of them that have taught themselves out of the ditch and then on to greater success.

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: NASSP Conference; NASB Conference; Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

Confirmed 2012 Presentations: