Smooth Operators

Recently I was talking to some aspiring campus administrators when one of them asked, “How do effective leaders monitor the learning environment to ensure smooth operations?”

This is a good question with a multifaceted answer.  Here is the short version of my response.

1. The leader needs to possess and maintain a good dashboard of critical leading and lagging indicators.  The leading indicators help you prioritize your actions, allowing you to just eyeball what is working and devote time to potential pitfalls. The lagging indicators serve as a wake-up call to the fact that something is out of whack.

2. The leader needs to ensure the campus has an effective common assessment process.  The common assessment process is the best way to ensure appropriate content pacing and to determine which instructional practices work and which instructional practices do not work.

3. The leader needs to live in the classroom and in the student common areas.  The work of schools is teaching and learning.  To lead a school effectively you must have intimate, first-hand knowledge of the work.  Otherwise, you are just guessing, or leading by approximation.

4. You have to constantly talk to your people, and more importantly, listen to your people. This allows you and the organization to pivot with ease and speed when the need arises.

5. Finally, regularly confer with your custodians.  They know more about what is really happening on your campus that any other staff member.  And once they know that you have their back, they will always have yours. 

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 
• Upcoming Conference Presentations: TASSP Assistant Principal Workshop (Keynote) 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

Common Assessment "Failure"

For most people in the general population failure is so mentally painful that they shy away from anything where failure is a distinct possibility. 

Now consider those is our profession (education). As a group, we are much more risk adverse than our peers in other professions. So actually, we run away from failure before we can learn anything useful from it.

That is the genius and the problem of the LYS short-cycle common assessment process. The genius is that the process creates little, low risk failures that teach a staff how to incrementally improve. The problem occurs when there is no leadership will and a staff succumbs to fear and quits the process.

There is no such thing as “risk-free” improvement.  But with the right process and the right leadership, there can be “risk-reduced” improvement.

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 
• Follow Sean Cain and LYS on www.Twitter.com/LYSNation  and like Lead Your School on Facebook

A Superintendent Writes... The Foundation Trinity

A LYS Superintendent shares the following:

SC,

I was recently listening to a principal discuss The Foundation Trinity with a group of teachers during professional development.  The principal concluded that the success of the campus was due to implementation of The Foundation Trinity.

My response... “Sort of.”

Certainly, The Foundation Trinity is an excellent system, but simply going through the motions is not enough.  Just as The Fundamental 5 can have an impact on instruction.  But in isolation, that's not enough.

The Foundation Trinity is a system that if worked properly will identify the strengths and weaknesses in your school.  But so what?  Too many people stop there, but that is where the real work begins.  Because the real question is, what are you going to do to address the problems identified by The Foundation Trinity?

In too many cases, the answer is virtually nothing.

So, don't deceive yourself into thinking that doing Common Assessments, Power Walks, and The Fundamental 5 are enough.  Those are the core components of your system and will identify who is learning, who is not learning, and why.  The real question is, what are you going to do about it? 

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...