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

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

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

TSA and the Typical School

I fly a lot. Which means that I am subject to TSA screening multiple times a week in multiple locations.  I’m law abiding and it is in my benefit to follow the rules.  Basically, I just want to do what is right and be left alone.  And most of the time this is exactly what happens.

However, about 10% of the time a TSA agent will tell me to do something that no other agent has had me do.  I will ask if this is a new procedure and invariably I will be chastised and told that what the agent is demanding is the way that it has always been, everywhere.  I will state that I am an experience flyer and that is not the case.  This immediately leads to suspicious looks, hostile glares and boarder line compliance.

Now consider your school.  Most of your students want to do what is right and be left alone.  They learn and follow the basic rules of school compliance.  Then they come in contact with the adult who demands a different wrinkle of student compliance.  There will be a student who will question the wrinkle. That student will be chastised and told that what the adult is demanding is the way that it has always been, everywhere.  If the student continues to make his/her case, now he/she is defiant and faces whole weight of campus discipline and punishment.

I’m is schools everyday and observe this very dynamic multiple times a month.  I’m not assigning blame.  I’m just pointing out that maybe we want to be less like TSA.

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: TASSP Summer Conference (Multiple Presentations); TEPSA Summer Conference (Multiple 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

Top Tweets From the Week of May 31, 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 May 31, 2015.

1. Congratulations to LYSer, Kari Eggleston! She is the new principal at Washington Elementary School!! Who will be next? (By @LYSNation)

2. Congratulations to LYSer, Tom Giles! He is the new principal at Marcy Elementary School!! Who will be next? (By @LYSNation)

3. “Kids today don’t know how easy they have it.  When I was young, I had to walk 9 feet through shag carpet to change the channel.” (By @DrRichAllen)

4. (Adopted Texas) Budget leaves 31% of school districts with less funding per pupil than what they had prior to the 2011 budget cuts even though money is available.  (By @DonnaHowardTx)

5. The biggest irony is that the people criticizing teachers the most, lack all the qualities needed to be a teacher. (By @NicholasFerroni)

6. 75% of teens have access to a Smartphone - how do we teach them to use them for learning? (By @DSteward89)

7. Superintendents all over Texas give dedicated leadership to our children. They should be heeded by legislators instead of ignored. (By @pastors4txkids)

8. “Many politicians make up for their lack of education with a keenly developed sense of moral bankruptcy.” (By @DrRichAllen)

9. We pray for the day when we care as much about putting a book in the hands of our citizens as we do a gun. (By @pastors4txkids)

10. Make plans to attend the FREE post-conference session on Friday afternoon. PowerWalks Observer Training with ‪@LYSNation is one you don't want to miss! (By @TASSP1)

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: TASSP Summer Conference (Multiple Presentations); TEPSA Summer Conference (Multiple 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

Strip Away the Complexity

For instructional leaders there is an ongoing, yet hidden, battle between IQ (intelligence) and EffQ (effectiveness).  And in almost all cases, the wrong Q wins.  Let me explain.  Your typical instructional leader is smart.  They see the complexity of problems and create complex solutions to solve those problems. When these smart people were solo operators (teacher, AP and small campus principal) they could execute their complex solutions with a high degree of success.  And this success was often the springboard to the greater position.  Yet, there is the rub.  At a certain point the strength of the high IQ and its complex solutions becomes a weakness. The tipping point from strength to weakness is when the complex solution has to be implemented beyond the direct, overt supervision of the smart person. 

At that point, the 2^nd tier (and beyond) implementer doesn’t understand the interconnectedness of the complexities and begins cutting corners, which quickly renders the solution worthless. 

This is where EffQ changes the game.  Effectiveness, in terms of solutions, is at-scale implementation.  Which means the effective leader takes the complex solution and strips away all the non-vital elements, leaving only an actionable core. An actionable core can be implemented at scale.

Now this can be frustrating for all of the smart, mid-level leaders in the system (and I readily admit, I was one of those people).  These people see how the solution isn’t optimal, how performance is left on the table.  And they are right while being completely wrong.

Because the optimal solution not executed, always loses to the actionable solution decently implemented.

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: TASSP Summer Conference (Multiple Presentations); TEPSA Summer Conference (Multiple 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