Top LYS Tweets From the Week of July 1, 2012

According to the latest Pew Internet report over 90% of adults in the United States now have a cell phone and 55% of those who own cell phones use them to go online. Additionally, there are now over 30 million tablets in use in the country.  And how are those tablets being used? To read, watch, listen, play, work, explore and buy.  Bootleg technology is here. It is in homes, cars, buses, backpacks, pockets, purses and lockers. As a profession, we pay lip service to instructional relevance and real world connections. Bootleg technology is about as real as it gets.

 

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 July 1, 2012.

1. LYSer, Brent Jaco, is the new principal at Lake Jackson Intermediate School! Who will be next?

2. Page 17 of Texas GOP Platform: "We support reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education." Republican teachers, did you read that? (By @johnkuhntx)

3. Absolutely terrifying. Republicans aren’t really even trying to hide their war on education anymore (By Peter Stuart)

4. As a teacher, I’m not a big fan of homework. If given it should fully support class discussions and be relevant. (By @CoachB1963)

5. "I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy." -John Adams (By @tlonganecker)

6. “I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a disgrace, that two are a law firm, and that three or more a congress.” -John Adams  (By @tlonganecker)

7. “You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” —John Quincy Adams (By @DrFrankBuck)

8. Standards don’t change even though we may refuse to meet them. (By @CoachB1963)

9. Just read “The Fundamental 5.” Would love to implement. (By @patriot_teacher)

10. The numbers just came in. June 2012 was the best month yet for The Fundamental 5 (Cain & Laird) book sales. Thank you, LYS Nation!

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) 
• Confirmed 2012 Presentations: Channelview ISD Leadership Team Kickoff, Bushland ISD Staff Kickoff, Canadian ISD Staff Kickoff, Highland Park ISD Staff Kickoff, Sunray ISD Staff Kickoff, Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote) 

Top LYS Tweets From the Week of April 22, 2012

I’m writing this as Lesa and I return to Texas, after spending a week working in the Boston area.  Since this was our first time in New England (by the way, it is well worth the visit), we took advantage of every bit of down time to sample the history, sites and culture.  Our travel tool of choice? Our I-Phones. 

Using our I-Phones, we researched where to visit, when to visit and how to get there. Our phones guided us everywhere, so we never got lost.  After visiting someplace or seeing something if we wanted to know more about it, we would research the topic on our phones.  When deciding where to eat, our phones pointed us to the highest rated (by customers) restaurants in our immediate area. And when our trip was commencing, we checked in to our flight home on our phone. 

Our smart phones freed up us up from basic organization and knowledge based tasks so we could focus on exploration, analysis and evaluation based learning activities. In short, our bootleg technology not only ramped up the rigor of our adult learning, but also allowed us to extend our time at those higher levels of rigor.  Embrace bootleg technology on your campus and in your classroom and before long similar opportunities will present themselves to teachers and students.  

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 April 22, 2012.

1. Great audience at the NSBA Conference. Many stayed after the presentation to learn more about LYS Campuses!!!

2. School Reform / Improvement can be summarized in one key concept: Adult practice drives student performance.

3. President John Adams’ first job out of college - Public School Teacher

4. Read yesterday that 3% of the voting populace will decide who goes to Austin. (By @cheadhorn)

5. Government investment in education, science and infrastructure has declined as a share of the economy since the 1970s. (By @FareedZakaria)

6. MIT essentially runs a four period trimester with the smartest kids is the world. Why do you still have your weakest students on an 8-period day, semester schedule?

7. To say PowerWalks are useless to education is like saying a tachometer is useless to a car. Both statements show complete misunderstanding. (By @txschoolsupe)

8. Dallas ISD superintendent will make $300,000 per year, manages 12,000 employees, 156,000 students. By comparison, the CEO of Hershey manages 10,000 employees for $3.4 million per year. (By DrJerryRBurkett)

9. MIT students who pass fencing, archery, sailing and pistol earn a degree in Pirate. No joke.

10. MIT is 100% WI-FI accessible. Use of bootleg technology is expected. What is the expectation on your campus?

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: TASSP Conference (multiple sessions); Region 10 ESC Fall Leadership Conference (Keynote)

A Slightly Different School Finance Discussion

It’s lonely in the middle…

I’m going to state up front that I am a fiscal conservative who is an actual advocate for public education. In every general election, I vote a split ticket. In other words, I occupy the middle ground. I believe that in the current economic crisis, the answer is in the middle. Unfortunately, the extreme actors on both sides of the equation seem to be locked in an ego induced death roll. A death roll that produces collateral damage that can be easily measured in the currency of lost student opportunity. And do not kid yourself; the economic repercussions of lost student opportunity can linger for a generation or longer.

So where is the middle? The middle recognizes that times are tough. And in tough times, labor has to make some concessions. This is new to educators, because we traded the risk of the private sector (job volatility) for less reward (lower pay). And for the past two years, the education sector has been safer than the private sector. This is no longer the case. Sorry, I don’t like it either. But not liking it doesn’t make it go away.

The middle also recognizes that if we want someone to provide a service, we have to pay for the service. Educators, like most public servants, give extra of themselves freely. But they still need to get paid, and trained, and supported. So how does the public pay for the service of educating the next generation? Through taxation. Does the middle like to pay taxes? No. Is the middle willing to pay taxes if it is for the greater good? Yes.

Unfortunately, the right has discovered that there is political hay to be made by constantly stemming the flow of taxes. There does not seem to be an understanding that once we quit investing in future (and education is an investment in our collective future) the future becomes a much scarier place. And the left has wrapped itself in the mantle of labor rights. Student centered school operations, which has always been more of a dream than a reality, continues to be crushed between competing adult interests.

So here is what I propose:

1. Remind labor, that tough times require concessions.

2. Remind those in power that under-funding schools is even a worse proposition than over-funding (by the way, I’ve been in education for over 20 years now, I'm still waiting to see a case of system-wide over-funding).

3. Cast your votes based on dialogue and leadership, not sound bites.

4. Change your litmus test. For me, the critical candidate issue is not immigration, gay marriage, abortion, taxation, etc. The key issue is now public education. This is not a “liberal” position. It actually is the position advocated by John Adams, one of our most conservative founding fathers. He wrote and I believe, “It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”

Finally, we have to quit having knee-jerk negative reactions to any discussion on either taxation or budget cuts. The taxpayers before us paid for us to go to school, paid for the security we enjoy, and paid for the infrastructure that we still use daily. We turned out pretty good. Now it’s time to stand up and shoulder our part of the load. That’s what we do in the middle.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...

Follow Sean Cain at www.Twitter.com/LYSNation

A Reader Writes (Sunday Advice from 2/7/10)

In response to the post, “A Reader Shares… Sunday Advice - 2/7/10,” a reader writes:

“I do not like to disagree with Don Brown, Sean Cain, or Bob Brezina but I am going to have to on this point.

The principal is NOT the only pure advocate for students on the campus and to make that flippant statement is ludicrous! I know several campus administrators and I am one of them, who are not the head principal but are very happy with where I am placed at the current time and we are powerful advocates for the students, sometimes MORE than the principal.

Not every assistant principal is striving for a seat in the big chair, and I absolutely do not put any other need before the students. I do not know where this philosophy was born, but is has become a common philosophy among the LYS staff and it really pisses me off! Counselors, nurses, special education teachers, and AP's can sometimes be the best advocates for students.

As far as I am concerned, many principals spend a little too much time at central office worried about their next promotion to central office. Head principals are sometimes the most out-of-touch people on the campus. So to say they are the only true advocate is idiotic and stupid.

Don't piss off this Marine, I will send rounds down range without aiming first. Friendly fire can be the deadliest.”

SC Response
Oh, the power of context. The pure (not only) advocate rule is short hand for a longer explanation, which is obviously warranted at this time. The rule is not meant to imply that individuals, regardless of position, are not motivated to ensure that student needs are met and can not set aside adult wants. This occurs all of the time. Instead the rule recognizes that certain roles can have role specific agendas that can be contrary to a student first agenda.

For example, teachers do all of the heavy lifting in education. They are where the rubber hits the road and student learning is directly correlated to their sweat equity. But it is human nature to want to reduce your work load and take labor saving short cuts. Saving labor and maximizing instructional effectiveness is often a mutually exclusive proposition.

Assistant principals, as a role, often serve as the “bad cop” on the campus. In this role, sacrificing the needs of a few students to facilitate order and effective school operations can be a logical course of action. As an aside, you were trained in a program specifically designed to protect students from this type of situation, so you know first hand the fights we had everyday with adults who did not share our philosophy.

Central Office personnel are generally focused on the “big” picture. Even with the purest of hearts, they make decisions that are best for the whole, even when they know that those decisions, by necessity, will be detrimental to some individuals.

Board members, as elected officials are naturally oriented toward political necessities, which by definition are the needs and wants of adults.

The principal, due to the fact that she is most directly accountable for the performance of her campus, is put in the position to be the best pure advocate for each individual student. The principal occupies the sweet spot where self-interest and community interest is best defined by student performance. Thus, Brown’s Rule.

Brown’s Rule is not meant to be insulting. It is meant to stimulate awareness and to serve as both a warning and a challenge to rise above ourselves and set aside our personal needs. This recognition of positional roles and the need to balance their destructive “passions” is not a new concept or dilemma. Brown’s rule simply recognizes at a school level what Adams, Hamilton, Madison et.al. identified and then built organizational structures to overcome at the nation building level.

Now to your comment, which fired me up. If you are going to disagree, do so at full speed! First, hopefully you can now see that the comment is not flippant. Plus, you know that Brown (and Brezina) is very deliberate in what he says. A skill that he has honed through decades of leadership at the campus, district, community, state and national levels.

Second, we all agree that individually, educators in all positions make numerous decisions each day the place the needs of students over their individual wants. Again, the rule illustrates that there are position based agendas that if not checked, can easily run counter to the needs of students.

Third, yes, there are ineffective, lazy, and just plain bad principals. And for as tough as some people think I am on teachers, I’m ten times as tough on leadership in general and principals in particular (again, as you have witnessed first hand). A bad teacher can sink a class, but a bad principal can sink an entire school.

So hold your fire Marine. There’s no need to frag the messenger. E. Don, is there anything that you want to add?

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...